


Spirits

by caffeineivore



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Spirits, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angels, Banshees, Elves, F/M, Gargoyle, Immortals, Kitsune, Mortals, Multi, Nature Magic, New York City, Nymphs & Dryads, Vignettes, Water Spirit, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2019-08-21 01:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 40,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16567076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caffeineivore/pseuds/caffeineivore
Summary: The world is more than what it seems. A mish-mash of immortals cross paths in the city that never sleeps as a certain couple are about to get married. AU urban fantasy, senshi/shitennou, Usagi/Mamoru, WIP. Features a pastiche of a slew of different myths/legends from all over the world. Chapters are semi-chronologically arranged, though each can technically be read as a vignette by itself.





	1. Blind Date

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellorgast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellorgast/gifts).



> So... this started because I had just finished with my bang fic for the senshi/shitennou mini-bang this year, and lots of other people were still writing. In solidarity with those still working on their fics (okay mostly Ellorgast because I love her), I continued to write during out timed writing challenges. I only started with a vague idea of names for the senshi for this ficverse and this sort of gradually took shape as the days and weeks progressed. I have no idea how many more sections there are, but have at! Names of the characters will be listed at the end of each chapter.

_There’s something a bit off, a bit odd about her._

That is the second thing that Zhen thinks, when he arrives at the cafe. It’s fairly crowded, with the mid-afternoon rush, and yet it takes him but a minute to find her, that friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend whom Jareth insisted that he meet. “You’d like her. And just think– you do still need to attend that wedding, and what better way than as her date? She’s a friend and colleague of the groom-to-be.”

_She’s beautiful._

That, of course, is Zhen’s first thought, even as he walks with the innate, easy confidence of several millennia of nature magic at his beck and call. He knows that his smile is irresistible; in fact, in such crowded places as these, he tones it down a little, lowers his voice and his eyelashes just a tiny bit. He’d almost started a riot at a good– _dear Heavens!_ – sixty-some-odd years ago, when he’d winked at a girl outside a department store. Thankfully for him, the local authorities just assumed the crowd had gathered to participate in yet another political protest in those trying times known as the ‘60s. 

“Hey there. Raina, right? I’m Zhen, Jareth’s friend.” She peers up at him with wide blue eyes clear and yet fathomless as a still-and-silent sea, and the hand she places in his is chilly. There’s an almost-empty pitcher of ice water set on the table, alongside a glass. Nothing more. It does explain the cold fingers, but not the way her blue-black hair seems to ripple almost imperceptibly, despite the lack of a breeze. “I know this is probably super awkward. I hate blind dates.”

“Then why did you come?” The question should be rude. But it is merely curious; asked as though she truly did not understand what made everyday humans do the dozens of things that they did, daily, that they professed to hate. Perhaps something of his surprise shows in his expression, because she bites her lip, and the faintest flush crosses her cheekbones. It’s pink– but a cool, pearlescent colour, not the stain of blood-red-heartbeat. “I’m sorry. That was probably not very polite.”

“Sometimes, honesty is better than politeness, don’t you agree? Do you want anything to eat, maybe? I’m going to get a sandwich.”

“I… no, that is all right, but thank you. I’ll stick with water for now, I’m not hungry.”

She takes a sip, and is it his imagination, or do her eyes shine brighter, after? Zhen muses over it to himself as he steps up to the counter, turns on just a tiny iota of the charm, and orders the soup and sandwich combo of the day, knowing full well that the instantly-infatuated barista would give him extra cheese without his prompting. It was, perhaps, a shabby thing to do. But to keep up the daily pretense of normalcy required a lot of energy, and he had no intention of dealing with any consequences of– exhaustion. Especially in such a crowded public setting. The people of this day and age did not believe in nature spirits and shapeshifters, and were wont to carry such things as guns and camera phones. 

Of course, it was a pity about the girl. _Raina._ What a beautiful name for a lovely face. He sighs, and fetches his meal at the pick-up counter. As he’d predicted, the sandwich is all but gaping open, loaded with toppings, and the soup came in a bowl rather than the standard cup. He had too much time– and therefore no time for flirtations. Any girl he met could only stay in his life– and he in theirs– for a year, or maybe two. He could do a lot of things, but controlling the process of aging– theirs, and his lack thereof– was beyond his scope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zhen: Zoisite  
> Raina: Ami  
> Jareth: Jadeite


	2. The Carnival

It’s cheap and artificial and frowsy in the best of ways, Jareth thinks as he strides through the throng of people at the local carnival. The air smells like spilled popcorn and melted cotton candy and slightly smokey fry oil used to make a few too many funnel cakes, and the blinking lights are almost lurid as they come on for the evening, on the carousel and the Ferris wheel. 

It’s crowded and therefore anonymous; Jareth walks behind a family of four all but unnoticed as the little boy, clearly tired, buries his face in his father’s neck. A little girl, somewhat older, clamored loudly and tugged at her mother’s hands towards the front of the line and the hawker. They’re right in front of him at one of the Midway games, its signage advertising prizes for the winners, painted with a simplistic depiction of what must be someone’s vague idea of Robin Hood. Jareth hid a chuckle; Locksley would have been somewhat appalled that someone, several hundred years after his death, had seen fit to paint him as a skinny ginger with an elaborate goatee. 

The parents hand over some money to the game hawker, who hands the little girl a bow and some arrows fixed with suction cups on the ends. Apparently the object of the game was to hit the target for cheap teddy bears of varying sizes and colours. The hawker gives the child some brief pointers, and Jareth rolls his eyes; his toddler cousin, picking up his first bow in the time of Robin of Locksley, had better form. 

Naturally, even after two rounds, the hapless child wins nothing but the most nominal of prizes, and Jareth shakes his head with a bit of pity even as he steps up to the front of the line. Really, he shouldn’t do this. It isn’t fair, and furthermore, it’s attention-drawing. But when he hears the girl wail after her father declares, in no uncertain terms, that he would not be spending any more money on that game, he makes his mind up.

“Five dollars for three arrows, and ten dollars for ten.” The hawker takes the twenty-dollar bill that Jareth hands him, but before he can even finish digging for change, Jareth picks up the whole quiver, hefts it briefly, then steps back, lets fly. Of course the bowstring is almost as limp as an untied shoelace, but this– this he could do, blindfolded and asleep. Twenty arrows cluster almost comically in the center of the target board in a matter of seconds, fired as rapidly and neatly as machine gun bullets, and the hawker’s moneybag and jaw both drop to the ground at the exact same moment. Jareth raises an eyebrow at the hawker, who simply gestures the bottom shelf of the prizes. He picks out a white teddy bear almost the same height as the little girl, then hands it to her, grinning when her eyes light up. 

“Say thank you to the nice man, Katie!”

“Fank you!” Katie’s smile reveals one missing tooth. Jareth inclines his head.

“You are welcome, little one.” 

But he turns away, pivots through the crowd before the parents can ask any questions, gets into another line at random. This one’s for the psychic lady, with what someone must have thought was a dancing gypsy on the signage. But it’s the woman seated at the table who draws his attention, almost immediately. 

She is not wearing anything flashy. A neat black dress. A silver ring with a ruby on one hand, a jade bangle on the other. There is a cameo with a red ribbon on her neck and her hair falls like black rain behind her, straight and fine. It’s the eyes, Jareth notes, which had drawn him. Deep violet, heavy-lidded, _knowing_. He feels the tips of his ears (mostly hidden under his baseball cap) grow hot, a sensation he’s not felt in eons. 

“You’re far away from home, _Ælf_ -kine.”

“I am,” he returns, peers at her for a long, still and silent moment as he ascertains just who– _what_ she is. “And do you have a name, milady wise woman?”

“Ember. You can call me Ember.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jareth: Jadeite  
> Ember: Rei


	3. Cobwebs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentions of death (not canon characters).

The hospital’s ICU ward is brightly lit, even at this witching hour of midnight. This part, at the very least, is quiet, a few hallways away from the controlled chaos that is Bellevue’s ER. Desirée had already made her rounds there; she’d met the eyes of two of the people in the waiting room– an elderly woman ashen-faced with chest pains and, even more heart-wrenchingly, a teenaged boy, his face that peculiar adolescent mix of defiance and naivete, bleeding out from a gunshot wound. The woman had looked away after a moment, resigned. The boy almost seemed fascinated, and that was both typical and sad. Even at death’s door, teenage hormones were teenage hormones when one was approached by a golden-haired apparition with a pretty face. Desirée would visit them later– after surgery, and aenesthetics, so that they could at least be comfortable when she arrived.

Instead, she makes her way to a quiet room, where lies a once-great man. Charles Vanderbilt had been a tall, rangy bull of a man once, with a voice that rang like a trumpet and broad shoulders meant for well-cut Italian suits. Now, he looks shrunken, lying there attached to machines that kept him alive, succumbing slowly to the kidney failure that came as a result of a life almost too-well-lived. 

Desirée slips through the door of the room, clad in stark white, footsteps silent in the sensible shoes favoured by the hospital’s nurses. Vanderbilt had not had a visitor in weeks; his son is in London, negotiating a new contract for the European branch, and his wife– his third wife, a buxom redhead more concerned with her own safety and security than the uneventful final days of a barely semi-conscious man– is even now lifting her glass for more champagne at one of the city’s finest restaurants. There is a bouquet of fading flowers in a vase on the windowsill– incongruous pink roses, more suitable for the giddy flush of first love, of teenagers at prom. There’s an industrious spider busily spinning a cobweb spanning from the corner of the window to the faded but still sturdy stems of the flowers– it’s a measure, Desirée thinks, of how easily a man can be forgotten.

What a pity, though. Pursing her lips, she wipes away the cobwebs off the window sill, then shakes her head as the already-wilting flowers shrivel into perfect, potpourri-sized buds, redolent of a ghost of summer fragrance. The water in the vase evaporates without leaving even the faintest trace of mist. But then she straightens; the air feels heavy, colder, charged. They are not alone in the room, and the visitor is no doctor or nurse or orderly. 

He’s tall; that much she’d expected, of course. _He who presides over the death of kings_ , as he’s known in some of the books, must be a commanding presence. One temple she’d visited in Jerusalem had a book which depicted him wielding a mighty sword, its blade shooting bolts of lightning. But here, framed by a door, pale hair shining like moonlight under the harsh fluorescents, he looks– almost human, harmless. He’s wearing jeans, even. Dark wash, well-fitted jeans, and a black leather trench coat over a stone-grey sweater that looked as though it’d be warm and fuzzy under one’s cheek. At that wayward thought, Desirée blushes, and he raises an eyebrow. 

“Are you questioning my appearance?” Kafziel intones, and his voice is even and measured and endlessly calm. It’s the type of voice suitable for late-night radio broadcast, she thinks whimsically, whereas hers is suitable for singing, or screaming. “You almost pass for a nurse, though that get-up is a bit too thin for this weather.”

“You don’t care about the weather, and sure you didn’t come to discuss that with me,” she responds with a bit of a scowl. Only a bit, though. One does not quite know what to expect, in definitely-not-day-to-day conversation with one of the angels. “I’m here every night, though perhaps not in this room, specifically.”

“We are both here, though, tonight.” Kafziel says, apropos of nothing. He watches silently as she makes her way about the room, clearing out the cobwebs, fussing over Charles Vanderbilt’s personal effects in that way of tidy females both human and otherwise. All of the clothes are folded with careful precision, and all of the shoes are lined up, even the hospital-issued slippers. Finally, Desirée picks up the man’s wallet, finds what she’s looking for. It’s a faded photograph– the sort that used to be commonplace half a century ago, showing a smiling family– father, mother, son, and brings it to the bed, careful to touch only the smallest corner of the paper. Even so, the air fills with a faint whiff of burning plastic. She brings it up to where Vanderbilt can see it, and his rheumy eyes open for just a moment. Enough to smile. Enough to breathe easily, one last time. As the machine flat-lines, its beeping monotonous and final in the otherwise-quiet room, Desirée drops the photograph with its slightly frayed edge onto the old man’s chest, over the sheet, over the thin hospital gown, over where a heart once beat strongly. She takes a deep breath, then her voice fills that silence with one solitary, long note– somewhere between a hum and a wail.

Almost immediately, the door opens, now to a parade of nurses and doctors and orderlies. Both Desirée and Kafziel step back into the shadows, by the once-cobwebby window, as they bustle about, as a white sheet is drawn over Vanderbilt’s peaceful face. The doctor bustles off as quickly as he’d come in, presumably to notify the family. The nurse and the orderly linger for just a moment at the door.

“He died peacefully, looks like. Almost looks happy, hmm?”

“Yeah. That’s all you can ask for, really. No pain, no suffering.”

Then they, too, walk out, and it’s Kafziel who breaks the silence. “You were kind to him, just now.”

“He was a good man, when he’d lived,” Desirée replies. “There’s a scholarship for underprivileged youths in his name, you know? Well. Of course you know. Had he been– the other kind, I wouldn’t be seeing you, now would I?”

Kafziel’s lips quirk in what– on more human, less perfect features– would be a grin. “I’m sure our paths would still have crossed, eventually.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Desirée: Minako  
> Kafziel: Kunzite


	4. Cards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chronologically, this immediately follows Chapter 2. Also, I know nothing about tarot so totally BS-ing here!

The domain of the wise woman is sparse, which Jareth expects, considering that it’s a temporary set-up at a carnival. Still, there’s an elusive spark of _something_ , clinging like the faint scent of hearth-smoke in the air, curling up in fragrant wisps out of the cups of tea which she pours. There is no great cast-iron cauldron on a tripod over flames, no slinky black cat curling around a great straw broom in the corner. There is a cage of willow branches hanging up overhead, housing twin ravens; they chirp and caw a concise greeting from their perch as she seats herself across from him at the table. 

“Why are you here, _Ælf_ -kine?” She doesn’t mince words, and those hooded, violet-dark eyes of hers meet his straightforwardly. “This is hardly the sort of locale for you.”

“I could ask the same of you, milady.” There’s a deck of tarot cards on the table, and the tea he raises to his lips carry the faint scent of vervain and lemongrass. “This is not the place where one would find many believers of the old craft.”

“You can call me Ember.” She’d given her name before, and now raises a chin and cocks an eyebrow as though she truly expects him to use it. “In this day and age, _Ælf_ -kine, we make do. Those who would seek me out, in need of me, will manage to find their way here.”

“If I am to call you by your name, you must, then, call me by mine. I’m Jareth. Jareth Sylvane.” Jareth finishes the tea, and she slides the teacup across the table, peers at the dregs. A sound between a sigh and a mumble escapes her lips in a puff of breath.

“So you’re here to inquire about a wedding.”

“She’s like a sister to me,” Jareth confesses with a lopsided grin. “I suppose that’s not right, considering, but I love her dearly. The man she’s marrying is almost good enough for her. We grew up together– well, she thinks so. I wandered into her life about ten years ago. By mutual choice, I stayed.”

He rests his hands casually on the tabletop, and she takes one, turns it so that the palm faces up. Her fingers, warm and surprisingly calloused, tipped with neat almond-shaped nails, trace slowly over his palm, his fingers. It’s a clinical touch that has no business leaving trails of heat in its wake, like the faint flicker of candleflame. 

Jareth imagines that she’s learning, as a wise woman does, of how he’d met Angela Schein all those years ago, back when she was a naive little teenager about to go to college. The most mundane of meetings, where she’d crashed into him full tilt in the science hall, followed quickly by babbled apologies and embarrassed tears when she’d realized she was in the wrong building. He’d been charmed, and walked her to her class, and bought her a hot cocoa afterwards. She’d asked about his family, and when he’d said nothing, she’d filled that awkward silence with all the warmth of her pure heart, as though it was completely natural– even in the world of mortals– to take on a brother in the span of a few hours. 

“You wish to know if she’ll be happy.” Ember doesn’t phrase this in the form of a question, not really. Her eyes meet his; now, rather than challenging, they are almost kind. She slides forward the worn pack of tarot cards, cuts and shuffles with those slender hands. “Pick, then.”

He does, and she arranges them in the traditional pattern of the Celtic cross before she turns them over, one at a time. “He is the Earth, and she is the Moon. The Lovers card symbolizes the upcoming union, of course. It is between equals– in the ways that matter. The Knight of Pentacles is his role: he is still learning, perhaps. He has not grown up, surrounded by the love that she has, but he will learn, and guard what he can in the ways he knows best– he will make sure that she takes her vitamins and drinks enough water and always brings a sweater when it’s cold. The Nine of Cups is her role: she is receiving her heart’s desire, and so her happiness will colour any moments which might otherwise be dark or dull. The card of Strength blesses their union– there will be difficulties, of course, but they will overcome them.” Ember’s finely-formed lips curve in a faint smile, softening her exotic features into something almost approachable. “She will be happy, Jareth Sylvane. You need not worry about her.”

“And the rest of the cards?”

Together, they turn over the last four cards. The King and Queen of Wands. The Magician, and the High Priestess. For some odd reason, as she turns them over, her fingertips almost brushing his, she blushes. She busies herself pouring another cup of tea, then takes a long sip, clears her throat. “I… I suppose they’re about you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jareth: Jadeite  
> Ember: Rei  
> Angela: Usagi


	5. A Cup O' Kindness

It’s an old, Gothic monstrosity of a building, to be sure, with its narrow, lancet archways and rose windows. Up on the rooftop, solitary and weather-beaten, is the stone carving of an astonishingly human-looking gargoyle, hunched over, bat-like wings half-unfurled, but its features droll rather than monstrous, almost like a man caught in the moment of a laugh at his own expense, brought to life by chisel on stone. Of course, there are tufts of moss in the folds of his wings, and his back is spotted with rain and pigeon-droppings. The building was once a church, and now it stands vacant, sheltering a few vagabonds from the cold and unforgiving streets of a New York winter.

There’s no one stopping the woman as she heads up the stairs, long legs eating up the length of the floor and the height of the ascent, a hooded parka concealing a glorious, luxuriant tumble of chestnut nature-goddess curls. She boosts herself up on the roof with the agility of a born dancer, sits down, waits. 

Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimes the hour of midnight. The city never sleeps, but no one comes here to this long-forgotten spot. There is no one to bear witness as moonlight gleams like a beacon on the stone-man’s face for one single moment, only long enough to illuminate the eyes flickering to life, blinking against the dark. The stone limbs shudder to life slowly, with the scrape of gravel on slate, and bits of dirt and moss fall and slide down the roof tiles as he stands. 

He sees her immediately, and that chagrined smile widens. “Lady of the Linden Wood,” he intones, and bends at the waist in an elegant bow that’s been out of use for the last several centuries.

“You can call me Linden,” the woman replies with a wry smile. “Even in this land, being called the Lady of Anything is going to raise a few eyebrows.” She unslings a practical-looking rucksack from her shoulders and extracts a thermos, the type with a cup built into its lid. She pour something hot into the cup, which steams and scents the air faintly with something darkly fragrant, then hands it to him. 

He drinks, letting the slow burn of the liqueur warm him up from inside. The taste is familiar, now, though such a drink as Spanish coffee had never been within his purview, back when he’d first met her. If such a meeting it could be called. 

He’d been young, then, and foolishly honourable. A knight, the son of a knight who’d been the son of a knight before him. Full of dreams of war-glory and the bravado of youth. The wise women of the village had warned him, of course, about steering clear of her woods. “ _The Iele are not known for their mercy, should you incur their wrath_.” Of course, he’d dismissed it all as Old Wives’ tales, and when he’d seen the linden tree, growing tall and proud and wider around than two strong men, he’d not been able to resist. Such wood would make for the finest of shields– enough to equip his whole battalion. That the roots were encircled by a ring of bright red mushrooms which flashed deadly warning to anyone who’d seen it had not stopped him. She’d been shocked at the first blows of his axe, then furious, and then– and then, determined to make him see the error of his ways before he’d force her hand altogether, she’d appeared, looking much as she did now, though cloaked in gossamer and leaves rather than an oversized green hoodie over faded blue jeans. 

“This tree is not yours for the taking, Sir Knight.”

“I know. It’s yours, isn’t it?” He did look apologetic, wearing that same, now-immortalised, chagrined smile. “My Lady of the Linden Wood, our enemy bears down on us, closer every day. Soon, they will raze the village, leaving men dead and women wailing. I bear you no ill will, but I must stop them from taking away this land.”

She’d been unable to sway him from his path, and by the stroke of midnight, the once-proud tree fell with a roar like a living thing, dying. She’d watched him summon his men, bearing away the wood between them, and vowed eternal vengeance. She let him have his battle, let him rally the men of the castle and the surrounding villages to beat back the invaders, wielding their iron blades and the shields fashioned of her poor tree, and then confronted him when, again at the stroke of midnight, she found him in her woods. He was kneeling on the ground, at a spot marked now only by a stump surrounded by scorched earth, and this time when she’d appeared, her eyes had been the bright red of new blood and there’d been the wings of a predator protruding from her shoulders. “You dare return!?” 

He hunches over, wordless, even as she whirls around him, ever closer, ever quicker, little flames forming where there wasn’t anything to burn on the ground, everywhere her feet touched. He’s single-minded in his task even as she shouts down her wrath, and it is just when the spell is finished that he, too, seems to be stop. She looks down on the ground by his granite fingertips, and no amount of words in a century’s worth of thoughts could describe what she thinks and feels, just at that moment. 

Between those still, broad fingers, is a tiny sapling, clearly carefully uprooted from a well-maintained orchard. It’s a warrior’s clumsy way of attempting atonement, but the damage is done. The tree grows, a weird, twisted little thing– a completely out-of-place apple tree amidst a grove of much-taller timbers, but the man is no more. Maybe it is his penance, his poor honour, which keeps his heart beating. For every night, at midnight, the stone falls away from those hours until dawn, and he is granted a reprieve. 

Perhaps it is because he knows that he’s cursed, and that stone will forever outlast flesh. He doesn’t try to return to his castle, or his father, or any number of simpering village lasses which Linden imagines he must have left in his wake. 

By the time the castle lies crumbling and forgotten, a stone shell on a cliff, they’re almost friends.

When he’s transported across an ocean, life-like statuary aboard a tall, white-sailed ship, she goes with him, and doesn’t really care to analyse the why.

Now, they’re both here, half-forgotten in a land which belongs to neither of them, and in the weird way of would-be-strangers sticking together in an even stranger place, she visits him. She meets other people, of course. In the way of all the Iele, Linden is beautiful, tall and green-eyed and voluptuous. And if the men of her acquaintance find her a bit intimidating, without any good reason to feel so, she can’t say that she minds, terribly. It’s good to be feared. Only one man, ever, had never feared her. 

And yet… She takes the half-full thermos from his hand, drinks the rest of the coffee. In almost-perfect charity, they sit together on that roof, and quite naturally, her head lands on his shoulder. It’s strong and solid as rock underneath her cheek, but for that moment, it’s warm. His arm wraps, quite naturally, around her waist, the gesture of an affectionate husband. “Tonight is All Hallow's Eve,” she murmurs, voice muffled by a cloak several hundred years out of fashion, yet delightfully soft against her skin. “Everyone is down there, celebrating.”

Fingers, cruel wrapped around an axe, gentle cupped around a sapling, brush against her cheek and jaw. They won’t be warm for much longer tonight, but neither of them mention it. He traces the contours of her face, and she thinks there is something different in his smile, in that moment, right before he dips his head. “I think… I think, so are we.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Linden: Makoto  
> The Knight: Nephrite


	6. Seasonal Flowers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of "Harbinger" here refers to a harbinger of death (a banshee). As for being descended from the Gwragedd Annwn, they are Welsh water nymphs who marry mortals and, because the husbands broke a promise, escape back to the lake, though they are known to still help raise their children and train them to be great healers. Figured it'd fit with Ami's separated parents.

The waiting room of Bellevue’s ER is not a cheerful place by any stretch of the imagination, nor should it be, and yet on this day, it seems as though someone or another made some sort of token effort– likely in anticipation of the upcoming holidays. Next to the tired rack of magazines on one of the tables, someone had placed a potted poinsettia plant, with a wide gold ribbon around the green cellophane wrapped around the pot, its scarlet bracts almost too garish against the spic-and-span white wall. 

Raina, crossing through at the tail end of a grueling fourteen-hour shift, glances at the plant and shakes her head, giving it a wide berth. It was an odd thing to bring to a hospital waiting room, certainly. Such a finicky, delicate plant typically did not do so well in such an inhospitable environment.

She senses the presence of someone else, someone hovering off in the corner by the nurse’s station, though she is almost certain that the nurse manning the desk does not sense that presence. Just a shadow, a hint of static in the air, but Raina huffs out a breath with an exhalation of mist. “You can come out, you know. I know you’re there.”

There’s a flash of white garments– almost nurselike– Raina thinks detachedly. A vague impression of golden hair that flutters even in the windless corridor. “You can see me?”

The voice is peculiar– somehow musical and sharp at the same time, the tone like that of a soprano singer caught in a high cadenza. That alone tells Raina who– _what_ – the other is. “I knew it would only be a matter of time until I met you in person,” she says calmly, just loud enough that the other could hear. “Every hospital has a Harbinger, doesn’t it?”

“That’s a kinder name than some I’ve known,” Desirée says wryly. She is by Raina’s side in the blink of an eye. Now, closer, Raina can see that the Harbinger has a fair face, with kind, noble features. “I suppose that I should ask you who you are, considering that you can see me and you aren’t anywhere close to crossing.”

Raina laughs softly, the sound like the faint ripple of water over smooth-worn stone. “No, I suppose I’m not close to crossing. I come from the line of the _Gwragedd Annwn_.”

“A lake-maiden healer!” Desirée dimples, inclines her head. “The mortals are fortunate to have you.” 

All at once, though nothing specific tells her so, Raina knows that the Harbinger had been the one to bring in the poinsettia, in an effort to liven up the room. Death and destruction followed in her wake; most of her kind left a swath of withered ruin, killing everything they touched. This one seemed surprisingly gentle-hearted, however. And then again, perhaps the mildly toxic nature of the poinsettia plant afforded it a peculiar protection. It seemed almost as though the Harbinger, for all it was her calling to guide and mourn the dead and dying, wished to make that crossing as pleasant and easy as possible. Raina, feeling strangely at ease with the golden-haired spirit, bows her head in return. 

“I daresay I could say the same for the mortals, about you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raina: Ami  
> Desirée: Minako


	7. Yuletide

Even on this longest and darkest of winter nights, the bright lights of Manhattan illuminate the street on which the vacant church stands. It had snowed earlier during the day in pretty puffs of white, though now, the curbs run slick and wet with gray slush. Off in the distance, a clock strikes midnight, and almost on cue, the roof hatch opens. 

The stone knight comes completely to life at the last strike of the clock, and almost before his eyes completely blink open, they turn towards where his visitor is shutting the roof hatch behind her. Linden almost never dresses up– it would not do to attract undue attention while walking into an abandoned church only frequented now by a few vagrants escaping the winter cold. Today is not much of an exception– her jeans have definitely seen better days, and her boots are already marked with road salt from the snow plows. However, tonight, there are festive sprigs of greenery pinned to her coat lapel and hat. Bright holly berries glow like rubies against dark green wool. 

“My Lady–”

“Linden. Just Linden, tonight.” For all their history, the animosity and accord in equal measure, he insists on using only the courtliest of manners with her, and it’s vexing in a way that she doesn’t care to analyze. Surely, after crossing eight centuries and a wide ocean, they were– in the common phrase of this day and age and place– “better than that”. He smiles at that, almost rakishly, and she wonders, not for the first time, if he’d had a smitten sweetheart from the village before their paths had crossed with such utter finality all those years ago. If he had, he’s certainly never made mention of her, but she knows well enough that young, good-looking men in the prime of life seldom lived in solitude. 

“It’s the first big snowfall of the year,” he remarks, apropos of nothing, as she sits down next to him as is their custom, unzips her bag. This time, she brings out not only a thermos, but a plastic ziploc bag, filled with golden-brown gingerbead cookies. 

“Wassail and gingerbread, for Yuletide,” Linden says quietly, pouring out a cup of the hot, spiced drink. It smells like cinnamon and star anise, mead and mulled apple cider. A wry grin crosses her lips as she hands him the cup. “Drink and be well, Sir Nathalán of Stormbrook Keep.”

“You know, you are the one who does not wish to stand on ceremony, milady… I have not been Sir Nathalán in a very long time.” He sips the hot drink, and bestows another grin upon her. “This tastes a great deal better than the wassail from when I _was_ Sir Nathalán. These spices would have been nigh impossible to find, especially in the winter.”

“There’s also the matter of refrigerators, genetically engineered food plants, and FDA standards,” Linden says wryly. At this distance, she can feel the warmth of his breath against tendrils of her hair. It smells like snow and cinnamon sugar, probably would taste the same. She doesn’t choose to test that theory, though, instead busying herself with the bag of cookies. “Here. I made these myself.”

He takes one, bites down, then takes another. “Spectacular,” he pronounces around a mouthful of sugared, spiced dough. “I did not know that you worked in a kitchen.”

“Linden Thorne is a successful food blogger and cookbook author, I’ll have you know.” She pulls an iphone with a floral-patterned case out of a pocket and pushes a few buttons, then allows herself a grin as he watches a youtube video of her making homemade peppermint bark in undisguised fascination. 

“Linden Thorne.” He says the name slowly, as though savoring the way the syllables taste on his tongue. “What would I be called, do you think, in this time and place?”

Linden opens her mouth to speak, to speculate, but any words she might have said die unspoken on her tongue. There is another, powerful presence on the rooftop, and she whirls around, one arm half-shielding Nathalán on fierce primordial instinct. No one comes up on this roof, and the hatch is securely latched still. 

The newcomer is tall, with starshine hair fine and long as a unicorn’s. The black leather trench coat and fine suede boots are not weather-appropriate for a sloping, winter-scarred rooftop, but he seems completely at ease, not at all cold. There is an aura of underlying strength and power beneath his quiet gray gaze, of calm conviction. It takes a moment for Linden to recognize him for what he is.

“Kafziel, Watchman of the Seventh Palace,” the angel intones. His voice is deep and measured, reasonably benevolent, and Linden relaxes fractionally. It was a church, after all. In a way, Kafziel had more of a right to be here than either of them. He did not seem angry, though, that she could tell. (It was awfully difficult to tell a lot of things about angels).

“Linden Thorne,” she returns the introduction with one of her own. “And this is– _was_ – Sir Nathalán of Stormbrook Keep.” 

Neither of them explain to the angel about how they came to be there, Iele and gargoyle on an icy church roof, but Linden is almost certain that Kafziel already knew. She had not felt any guilt at the time of Nathalán’s infraction and subsequent punishment, but then again, Kafziel’s kin held to a far more rigid code than her sisterhood. 

Strangely, the angel chooses instead to focus on the half-eaten bag of cookies and cooling thermos of wassail still scenting the night air around them. “This is a festive time of year for the mortals, is it not?” 

“Yes. And a triumphant one for you,” Linden returns, without any rancour. A sudden thought occurs to her, and she lets out a faint, single-note laugh before she can stop it. “I’d offer you some homemade gingerbread cookies if I thought you’d be interested. _Do_ you like cookies?”

“I’m fairly sure everyone likes cookies,” Kafziel says reflectively. He takes one, though he seems more interested in turning it over in his hand, feeling the soft, cakey texture of the gingerbread, than eating it right away. A faint smile crosses his lips, an indulgent expression which softens the almost-too-perfect features into something a bit less enthralling and terrifying. “Someone I know is similarly enamoured of all the mortal festivities and traditions of the holidays. She made a point to decorate the busiest hospital emergency room in the city like it’s her home. Though– I suppose, in a way, it might well be.”

Linden doesn’t have time to wonder about who or what in the world would keep company with someone like Kafziel when Nathalán interjects, in his typically unthinking, foolhardy way, toasting the angel with the rest of the wassail. “Be well, Kafziel, Watchman of the Seventh Palace. Health and a short winter.”

“And the same to you.” The angel, to Linden’s eternal relief, does not seem particularly offended to be conversing with two who celebrated Yuletide rather than Christmas. And perhaps he’d been there, unseen, for a few minutes before she’d felt his presence, because he cocks his head to the side in a manner so stunningly human-like that she blinks. “You may call me Kafziel. And… Sir Nathalán, I think, in this time and place, you’d likely be called Nathan. Nathan Storm.” That brief, faint smile crosses his lips again. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Linden: Makoto  
> Sir Nathalán of Stormbrook Keep: Nephrite  
> Kafziel: Kunzite


	8. Keanu Reeves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of death (non-canonical character). Also alludes to several Keanu Reeves' movies, specifically The Matrix Trilogy and Constantine (very minor spoilers). A bit of potty language but nothing too serious.

The television is muted, but the movie playing on-screen is typical of action flicks of its era, all flashing lights and fight scenes, smoke and mirrors. The figure in the narrow hospital bed has a gaunt face, skin stretched taut over weary bones, and doesn’t even flicker an eyelash in surprise when Desirée edges through the open door, only a faint flutter of golden hair and white garments and completely soundless shoes. Millie Canfield coughs, then jerks a bony shoulder.

“You’re here. Well, you might as well sit. Just getting to the good part now.”

The old woman has a voice like a rusty chainsaw hitting a boulder and end-stage emphysema from a two-packs-a-day habit, but a part of Desirée is strangely gratified to see that she’s all spunk and vinegar– a firecracker all the way to the end. She is due to visit Millie today, but the details of this scheduled occurrence are mostly flexible. On-screen, the hero of the movie flies through the air, dodging bullets and blows, his handsome, angular face only half-obscured by dark sunglasses, a long black leather trench coat not impeding his gravity-defying movements whatsoever. The plot is something out of science fiction, about a dictatorship of artificial intelligence, but Millie is clearly in it just for the special effects and the good-looking hero. 

“That Keanu Reeves can’t act worth a damn in any movies where he has to be all emotional and shit, but boy is he a tall, cool drink of water, eh?” Millie wheezes, her thin lips pulling upward in a grin that must have once been devilish and irresistible. “I’ve been marathoning him all day.”

Desirée makes a low, humming noise in her throat and sits down in the chair by the bed. The man on the screen is pale and byronic, with nice cheekbones and dark, watchful eyes, and the long, dark coat is a good look on him, no matter how impractical. It reminds Desirée of…

Well, speak of the… definitely _not_ devil.

Kafziel– and really, Desirée should perhaps not think of him as that rather than The Watchman or _He who presides over the deaths of kings_ or any number of other, far more formidable titles– also wears a long black coat, though his quiet storm-grey eyes are not hidden behind sunglasses. He says nothing, a cool, calm presence against the sterile wall of that sterile hospital room, and keeps vigil even as the end credits of that movie finish and Millie picks up the remote control to select another. Five minutes in, though, Kafziel coughs, shakes his head as though in some measure of disbelief.

“Constantine, _really_?”

“She likes that actor,” Desirée moves away from her chair to stand next to Kafziel. She pitches her voice a lot lower than normal, so that it would not disturb the dying woman watching Keanu Reeves– playing some sort of demon hunter here– exchanging what looked like witty banter with a good-looking lady cop while chain-smoking cigarettes. “And… I suppose she relates, at least, to that habit.” 

There is an angel in that movie, played by a rather beautifully-androgynous woman, with a hint of very real darkness in her eyes at odds with the benevolent calm of her facial features. Kafziel sighs and shakes his head again. 

“Gabriel would be… somewhat unhappy if he ever saw this movie.”

“I’d make a jest about the term that you’re looking for is ‘mortally offended’, but that would be in very poor taste here, wouldn’t it?” It almost feels cozy– she’s certainly seen enough mortal couples living out this very trope: watching a movie to wile away an idle evening. That is not the direction her thoughts should be taking, though, so she changes topics. “I’m a bit surprised to see you here, tonight. She’s…” gesturing the now-sleepy Millie Canfield, “Hardly a king, even by the mortal definition. The papers state that she waited tables at a diner for most of her life.”

Kafziel peers down at her with one eyebrow fractionally raised. “Perhaps I just wished for some company.” 

All at once, for no reason whatsoever, Desirée is intensely aware of how close he’s standing, and how much taller he is than her. At this proximity, she can all but feel the soft brush of invisible wings like a caress against the small of her back, and she shivers. And the direction of that train of thought is even more disastrous than the other, so she says nothing in response and watches as the movie reaches its conclusion. Even as Keanu Reeves, in this incarnation, bids an ambiguous open-ended farewell to the good-looking lady cop, Millie Canfield’s breathing smooths out, more evenly than it had been for years. She has but moments left, and all of the sudden, Desirée rushes up to the bed, glancing over her shoulder at Kafziel imploringly.

He raises both eyebrows now, but for whatever reason, he shrugs and acquiesces, stepping into this plane and the light, moving towards the bed with a slow but purposeful stride. His hair is too pale and too long, but the dramatic swirl of his dark coat more than makes up for it. Millie blinks open her eyes, and a grin cheeky and tired in equal measures crosses that wizened face. “Well, shit. Now I _know_ I’m going to heaven. But my mama’s Bible definitely didn’t say anything about you.”

Something almost like embarrassment crosses Kafziel’s features, but it’s gone so quickly that Desirée thinks she might have imagined it. He lays a hand, kindly and gently, on the old woman’s where it rests over her hopelessly diseased lungs, and keeps it there as Millie breathes her last.

Desirée’s lament cuts through the silence, a slow wail of a swan song, but this time, when the doctors and nurses file in as though on cue, she only has eyes for Kafziel. “You made her happy. You made her so happy.” She sheds no tears; death is just another link in the endless cycle of all the creatures of the world, but her eyes glow an almost-unearthly blue as she stares up at the angel’s beautiful, almost-impassive face. 

“You always try to ensure it, with every visit and crossing. It would be poor form for me not to assist you, no?” A fleeting smile crosses his lips. “It is a good, noble thing that you do.”

She doesn’t blush any more than she cries, and yet she could almost swear that her face feels hotter than the sun just at that moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Desirée: Minako  
> Kafziel: Kunzite


	9. First and Second Meetings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for hints of violence.

It’s just a flash– like a dark shadow blinking into one’s peripheral vision for a split second before it moves back out of view, but Ember knows better than to ignore it. Lips thinning, hands clenching tight, she pushes her way through the crowd, guided forward by the foreboding buzz of a sixth sense, and she throws a silk-clad elbow straight into the path of an irritable-looking suit barking into a cell phone. He jumps out the way, cursing at her, but Ember doesn’t even spare him a backward glance. He’s perfectly safe, but not…

She follows the path of that subconscious darkness with the speed and precision of a heat-seeking missile, and dashes into the alley just in time to hear the click of a gun being cocked. The mugger has his pistol trained on a slim blonde wearing a pink woolen pea-coat, but for whatever unfathomable reason, she’s clutching her handbag, seemingly reluctant to hand it over even with a gun pointed to her head. Ember has but one moment to wonder at the woman’s reckless idiocy. Certainly the situation doesn’t allow for the luxury of analyzing someone’s motivations. 

It’s one of the first skills one learns, as a wise woman. _An’ it harm none_ is an oath, one she takes seriously, but fire in and of itself is essential to life, not harmful. A flick of the wrist, the ruby ring on her finger glowing like a red-hot coal, and then her clenched fist opens to reveal a compact cluster of golden flame the size of a golf ball. It soars towards an mostly-empty liquor bottle on the ground by one of the garbage cans, and the explosion echoes like a detonating bomb. The mugger’s bullet veers wide and wild, and he hightails it out the alley. Ember doesn’t bother giving chase; he’s not about to try his luck at any more criminal activities tonight after such a close call, and both she and the ditzy blonde need to be somewhere far, far away before the cops arrive. 

“Are you all right?” she reaches the blonde’s side, and the lecture that is on the tip of her tongue about the stupidity of not complying with an armed robber dies, unspoken, in the back of her throat. Her aura all but glows, pearly-white and pure, strong and startling as full moonlight glowing against an inky sky. _And here is the fairy princess who sings with the bluebirds and coaxes unicorns to sleep with their heads in her lap_. The thought hits her with not a little irony, but she keeps her voice gentle. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“I’m fine. Oh God, I don’t even know what your name is, or exactly what you did, but I’m pretty sure you just saved my life. So thank you! I’m Angela, by the way. Angela Schein.” 

The words tumble over each other with the flush of adrenaline, and Ember can’t help but smile. Angela Schein. She’s never heard of such an apt name in her life. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Angela. My name is Ember. Ember Ward. And… I didn’t do anything, really. Just threw a lighter at a bottle.” It was a plausible enough explanation if one didn’t take the time to analyze how the lighter had stayed lit once it had flown out of Ember’s hands, but she banked on the fact that Angela, worked up as she was right now, wouldn’t overanalyze it. “You should have just handed over your purse, though. He had a gun. Money can be replaced, you know, but life is precious.”

“I know.” Angela has the grace to look sheepish under her scrutiny, then she sighs, straightens her shoulders (fairy princesses did, almost always, eventually become queens). “It’s just… it’s my work bag, you see. I’m a social worker, and I have one of my case files in there. A battered wife who finally got up the courage to move out, file a restraining order. She has a three-year-old boy who doesn’t cry, doesn’t even whimper. Knows better than to make any noise when daddy’s home. I know it’s stupid, and probably an astronomical chance, but I just can’t have the information in that file ending up in the wrong hands. Like you said, life is precious.”

Ember does not particularly care for the fact that the other woman has just thrown her own words back at her, albeit in the gentlest way possible, but she knows better than to argue. One can’t reason with the moon and tell it not to shine. “Do you have somewhere you can go, close by? I could probably walk with you.”

“Well… I could call my brother. Honorary brother. He’s the best ever, and he does live out here in Brooklyn, and probably wouldn’t mind if I dropped by for wine and sympathy before making the long trek back into Manhattan.” In the way of all the world’s good creatures who had nothing on their conscience to hold them down whatsoever, Angela seems to have all but bounced back from the mugging and smiles at Ember in a way that looks almost beatific. “You could come. Jay doesn’t bite, and he’s a sweetheart, and… hey, are you single?”

“Excuse me?” 

“I’m being a completely rude pain in the butt, aren’t I?” Angela twinkles, then fiddles with a slender ring on her left hand. It’s rose-gold and dainty, set with a teardrop diamond that glowed with silvery light and a pair of pearls flanking it. “I’m being _that girl_ who, because she’s in love and engaged to be married, wants everyone else, ever, to be the same. You can tell me to go to hell, you know. It’s just that he’s nice and good-looking and you’re so pretty and brave.”

Ember doesn’t respond to that. “Your brother lives close?”

“Yes, just a few blocks. Let me call him, let him know we’re on our way.”

She shoulders her bag with the casualness of someone who wasn’t just almost shot in an armed robbery and dials as she walks, and Ember tunes out the conversation for the most part, as Angela laughs and tells her supposed brother of the near-death experience as one might a funny misadventure in Central Park. “But this nice lady who saved me is walking me to your place and we’re about to be there in five minutes and I hope you have some wine, because we so earned it! Okay. We’re at the building. Buzz us in.”

The building is a brownstone typical of a reasonably well-off Brooklyn neighbourhood, with a gingko tree shedding fan-shaped yellow leaves onto the sidewalk and ivy turning bronze with autumn climbing up the brick. Angela leads Ember up to the third floor, and the door opens even before Angela raises a hand to knock. 

Ember senses the blade before she even sees the flash of bluish silver behind the back of the man who opened the door, and on instinct alone, she all but shoves Angela back a step. The craft of a wise woman does not block physical attacks; she’d learnt more about how to deal with those from the self-defense class she’d taken at the gym than from her spellbooks. But certainly she could deal in what she knows– illusions, the channeling of the four elements of earth and fire and water and wind. But even as she’s readying herself, the man steps back, a breath stuttering in his throat, and at that second, she recognizes him, too.

“You.” Both of them say it at the same time. Ember stares up into the face of Jareth Sylvane of the _Ælf_ -kine and thinks, bewilderedly, that he looks different here, a warrior’s light in his eyes in protection of the would-be little sister he’d talked about over the tea leaves. Now she recognizes the blade as the standard curved knife carried by the _Ælf_ -kine, light and strong and sharp, for close-quarters fighting when they couldn’t use their favoured bows. It disappears before Angela, glancing curiously between the two of them, could notice it. 

The blonde girl smiles, laying a hand on Jareth’s arm and peering up at him with the mischievous look of a little sister. “You know each other? You never tell me anything!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ember: Rei  
> Angela: Usagi  
> Jareth "Jay": Jadeite


	10. A Life for a Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part of this is backstory-ish and has mentions of abuse and canonical character deaths (minor characters though).

The boy is perhaps four or five, certainly little more than a toddler, and though the ramshackle hut in the wilds of Appalachia isn’t quite the best of home environments, he grows up like a wild comfrey sprout spearing through the ashes of a brush fire, slightly spindly but sturdy, beautiful in the most unforgiving of surroundings. He’s the natural-born product of ignorance and abject poverty, and yet from his first steps, his first words, it’s clear that he’s nothing like those around him.

Adam wanders off, toddling off the dilapidated porch and into the woods, and perhaps had Pa not been sleeping off last night’s beers and Ma not been sleeping off last night’s beating, they might have stopped him. But the hut is eerily silent, and no one is awake when he wanders off in the direction of a sound almost too faint to hear. It’s a cross between a whine and a yelp, and though there is perhaps no earthly reason for him to hear it, he follows it into the dense brush. It’s late November, two days after Thanksgiving, and there is little to be thankful for in that household. 

He finds the source of the noise easily enough. Underneath a spiky bush that might have been ripe with blackberries a few months back is a thin, bedraggled-looking fox with a bloody paw, missing tufts of fur. Perhaps it had escaped from one of countless hunter’s traps in the area, or perhaps it had gotten into a fight with another animal. Adam’s blue eyes meet the fox’s sharp, tilted gold-green gaze, and perhaps had he been older, he would have wondered why it seemed as though the animal looked at him just like a human might– almost a wry smile. Certainly lacking an animal’s instinctual fear. 

Adam certainly had no business doing so, but he reached through the branches– stubby fingers just small enough to avoid the prickly thorns, and carefully petted the fox on the top of its furry head. The green-gold eyes blink and the animal lets out a sort of chirrup, and Adam’s stomach growls in response. 

“Ohhh. You must be hungry.” That, at least, was easily rectified. The fracas last night had started when Ma had let the leftovers get cold again by the time Pa got home. They still sat on the kitchen table, barely touched, and in almost no time, Adam was running back to his new friend with the better part of a turkey wing. The fox sniffed at it, then crunched it, bones and all, with the air of someone feasting after a long fast. It turned up its nose at cold gravy, but dug straight into the mashed potatoes, getting flecks on its whiskers. Adam watches as the little animal makes quick work of the food, and thinks that its fur looks brighter, burnished coppery-gold and glossy rather than matted now, but he doesn’t have time to wonder how that could be before the fox slinks out from underneath its thorny prison. With the friendliness of a tame labrador, it butts its nose against Adam’s hand, its flamboyantly thick tail waving back and forth like a flag, and the boy and the animal share a secret smile. 

The sound of footsteps, and Ma’s petulant voice calling for Adam, and he shoots up, hastily steps back. Best to get home before there’s trouble. He runs off to the direction of the hut, but glances back twice. The fox remains seated, looking oddly majestic in that copse of trees, watching him until he disappears from view. 

Less than a year later and Pa, swerving after a beer or five too many, sends the car– Ma and Adam in tow– over a guard rail on the mountain path. Adam doesn’t remember this– the hour had been midnight, and he’d been asleep in a sloppily-fastened booster seat. He wakes in the hospital a week later, with several broken bones and no surviving relatives and barely any idea of who he is, when questioned by the social worker assigned to his case. “The man saved me,” he tells her with the steadfast conviction of a child who doesn’t know better. “He has hair like fire and green eyes.”

The social worker knows the paramedics who carried his broken body out of the ravine, the operating surgeon in the ER that night. No one matches that description, but then again, little boys were known to be imaginative creatures. She doesn’t know how he managed to survive, but she chooses to focus on her job rather than speculating on a miracle with no answers in sight. Adam gets placed with a well-to-do childless couple and moved into a beautiful house with a rose garden and a white picket fence, and when he begins the first grade, the name on the teacher’s roll call list is “Adam King”. 

There are no more shouting matches, no more hungry nights. The man he calls “Dad” teaches him how to throw a football and build a birdhouse from plywood. The woman he calls “Mom” reads to him, then with him, every night. Curious George and The Very Hungry Caterpillar make room for Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. His room has a soft bed and a window that shuts tight and a dresser that matches the desk.

Sometimes, he sees a face super-imposed over his own in the mirror, but only when he’s not looking directly at it. Green eyes and dark gold hair. 

**

He doesn’t think too much of it, and by the time he’s in high school, he’s all but forgotten. It’s just impressions, anyway. Usually when he’s in trouble, or going through a hard time, a shadowy figure just outside of the line of his peripheral vision. Adam King grows up, managing not to let the world turn him hard and cold, goes to college then medical school, makes friends, gets a job, falls in love. Angela Schein is as sweet and lovely as her name implies, and he basks in her presence like a flower blossoming in the sunlight. He’d never been the poetic type, but he thinks that he understands those who swear they’d move mountains just to see their lady’s smile. She’s adorable and adoring and adored, and the whole first month of their engagement, he feels as though he’d just conquered the world– a true King, not just by name.

So, on their wedding day, his focus is certainly mostly on her, looking so ethereal and beautiful and dainty in her wedding dress that she’s like a fairy tale princess come to life. When he meets the date of one of his colleagues at Bellevue, he’s distracted, to say the least, but manages a polite smile.

“Raina. Good to see you.”

“Congratulations, Adam.” Raina Mariner is the head of Pediatrics at the hospital where he works as a trauma surgeon, perhaps the youngest head of Pediatrics the hospital has ever seen. He doesn’t know her too well– she’s rather reserved, though unfailingly polite– but he respects and likes her well enough. Her hand is chilly when he shakes it– probably the byproduct of holding chilled champagne flutes– but her smile is genuine, soft like still water. “I wish you two the best.”

“Yes– to your health, and happiness, and love.” Raina’s date intones in a smooth tenor voice. Adam glances over, company smile in place, then frowns. Green eyes and dark gold hair. The man looks like he could have stepped off a GQ cover, but if Raina’s smile is subtle and placid, his is warmth and good humour– _anima_. 

“Thanks… Do I know you?” Adam murmurs, looking at the other man. He certainly can’t think of a name to go with the face, and certainly he’s never seen Raina in his company before, but nonetheless…

“I don’t know, do you?” The question is almost insolent, but the grin is so infectious that Adam can’t find it in himself to mind. “My name is Zhen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adam: Mamoru/Endymion  
> Angela: Usagi/Serenity  
> Raina: Ami  
> Zhen: Zoisite


	11. Jazz

_There is something… different… about him._

Raina Mariner has certainly seen her share of charming young men, spanning several continents and the many, many years of her life. More often than not, in her experience, they were either less than what they seemed– self-centered charlatans masquerading, none-too-successfully, as gentlemen– or altogether more than what they seemed. There was Jareth Sylvane, for example. A friend of a colleague’s fiancée, and one of the few people who frequented the same gym as she did– at the same hours as she did. If she had not noticed the lanky blond practicing archery with the skill and flare of a Medieval outlaw at three in the morning and drawn the reasonable conclusion, the slightly pointed ears certainly would have clinched it for her. She doesn’t comment on it, though, much like Jareth says nothing about the hours she spends in the pool, holding her breath underwater for far too long. 

It’s through Jareth that she agrees on this date tonight, and the jolt when she first sees him– _Zhen_ – startles her enough that she finds herself tongue-tied. The face has an exotically beautiful cast to it, different and sensual just like his name. Hair a dark, bronzed gold and lips almost too full and red for a man. And then he lifts his long, long lashes and his eyes meet hers. They’re the golden-green of leaves about to turn and tilted up at the corners, with narrow pupils, and a hint of something vital and mischievous and slightly wild in their depths. If her hands are always cold to the touch, his are almost too warm, and when he smiles, asks her if she wants something to eat, his teeth are white and even and the tiniest bit sharp behind the cherubic lips. 

The date had gone well enough, though she had let him do most of the talking. Zhen was relatively new to the city, though he professed that he enjoyed all that it had to offer. He was a financial consultant, focusing primarily on real estate, and had made the acquaintance of Jareth in the latter’s own profession as an architect. He thoroughly enjoyed good food, but abstained from drinking alcohol, and had gallantly seen her home afterwards, despite the distance. There had been a cat-caller on the ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island, who had made a lewd remark and rude gesture towards her, and Zhen had simply stared at him with those fiery, untamed eyes, and the man had turned paler than paper and shrunk down in his seat, whimpering as though terrified of something silent and invisible, intangible to all but himself. 

“I hate those who mistakenly think disrespect is an acceptable form of flirtation. Banter is one thing, but…” Zhen had trailed off, frowning into the distance. “Sometimes humanity angers me.”

As though distancing himself from it. That, more than anything else, had her cautiously agreeing to seeing him again. 

He picks a restaurant for dinner– _Roselle_ – a trendy Thai fusion bistro that had gotten a glowing write-up by some popular food blogger named Linden Thorne and was reputed to be harder to get into than the infamous Cronut bakery in Soho at its hottest. Zhen greets the host with a friendly smile and inquires after the man’s family, and the head chef herself comes out to inquire about their meal. 

“It’s delicious, of course, but you didn’t come to ask me that, Naiyana.” Zhen had ordered a green curry redolent of coconut and lemongrass, with tender slices of chicken and jasmine rice on the side. “Raina, this is Naiyana, whom I met back when she was still in Thailand. I was traveling and hungry, she fed me, and I promised her that I’d pay her back someday. So I helped her get the building, back when she first opened this place.” 

Naiyana is diminuitive and has the laugh-lines and graying hair of a benevolent grandmother underneath her chef’s hat, and pats Zhen’s shoulder in a kindly manner. She sets down a dessert that they had definitely not ordered– tiny, exquisite coconut puddings arranged cunningly on folded pandan leaves– and glances across the room at one of the waiters. Almost immediately, the young man scurries to refill their drinks. Raina had requested ice water to go with her spicy grilled prawns, and Zhen had asked for Thai iced coffee. Though the restaurant boasted a full bar, he still abstained from alcohol. 

The restaurant is small and cozy despite its popularity, with dark wood fixtures and candlelit tables, and as they linger over dessert, Raina obliquely notices that an area of the floor is cleared with swift efficiency, a pair of young men setting up a mic stand, taking out a sax and an electric keyboard out of their cases. Jazz– sultry and slow, fills the restaurant, and through the window, Raina can see that the line out the door is a great deal longer than before. 

“I come here for the music as much as the food and company,” Zhen confesses, his eyes glowing like emeralds set in yellow gold in the dim candlelight. “Do you want to dance?”

He’s dazzling, probably hypnotic to the average woman, and while Raina is stronger than most in the face of temptation, she can certainly feel that draw. He wraps his warm fingers around her cool ones, and they sway together on the polished floor. His hair– long and luxuriant as a supermodel’s, despite the finance sector job– brushes her cheek, carrying the scent of musk and deep green forests. 

Raina had not spoken much, aside from the usual pleasantries and questions and answers about her work, her hobbies, and so on, and the question that lingers on the tip of her tongue like the taste of coconut and spice is a great deal more abrupt than any of the prior conversation. She gets the impression that Zhen, if angered, has the potential to be deadly. But then again, so does she. 

In her slight heels, the top of her head still only comes up to his chin. She stands on tiptoe, cool lips brushing against the lobe of his ear, and a faint shiver runs through his body– probably the reaction of different body temperatures at this proximity. “What are you, really?”

He draws back, just enough to stare down into her face. Those beautiful eyes go from wary to amused in the span of a single heartbeat, and a smile crosses those full lips. “You know what, beautiful? I’ve been wondering the same thing about you all night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zhen: Zoisite  
> Raina: Ami  
> Jareth: Jadeite  
> Linden: Makoto


	12. Carols

It’s out of nothing more than curiosity that draws Jareth into the same path that she takes. Ember, the wise woman, walks slowly and deliberately into the church, white snowflakes stark against her jet black hair before they melt into nothing more than glossy water drops. There is a choir singing at the front of the church, though no pastor seems to be present. Soft, harmonizing voices singing the familiar words of “Silent Night”. 

She lights a candle and seats herself in a pew, and doesn’t spare him more than a passing glance when he joins her. The candle is plain white and unscented, the type issued by the church for various services, and she bows her head over its tiny flame as the song draws to a close.

“You followed me in here.” She doesn’t mince words, but at least she does not seem angry. 

“I was curious, I suppose. Though this is a beautiful building.” The stonework on the outside is an exhibition of the finest work of the high Gothic style, with its elaborate carvings and soaring turrets. The stained glass windows glimmer with almost an inner light. The worn carpeting muffles the sound of footsteps, but the acoustics of the soaring ceilings brings the carol-singers’ voices to the forefront. 

“It is,” she agrees. “Of course, some would call it ironic, considering the source and intention of this building. It was commissioned by certain descendants of various historical figures who were magistrates during the Salem Witch Trials– sort of a penance, as it were. It’s not exactly Puritanical in style, wouldn’t you say?”

“Perhaps not, but I can appreciate beauty when I see it. I own an architectural firm these days, hereabouts.” The latter is said with just a note of gentle self-mockery. “So, I enjoy beautiful buildings.”

“The _Ælf_ -kine do enjoy their graceful palaces and perfectly-balanced fountains.” She doesn’t quite smile, but there’s a hint of it in her voice. “I’m an archivist for the Brooklyn library.”

“And the wise women enjoy their runes and their lore.” He returns, with a definite smile. “Do you enjoy the music, then? I daresay you don’t particularly enjoy the Puritanical history.”

“I come here for the Puritanical history, actually. It’s a promise to keep, of a fashion.” Ember falls silent as the choir starts on another song, the hushed and pensive notes of “O Holy Night” filling the air in lieu of her words. Jareth leaves her to her thoughts, her slim fingers cupped around wavering candleflame, and it’s only after the song draws to an end that she stands, walks up to the front of the church, and sets the candle– almost glutted out now, in a pool of quickly-melting wax– into a holder. “My mother’s wishes. I barely remember her, of course. I was just a baby when she died.”

Jareth raises a blond eyebrow with a bit of surprise. While wise women weren’t completely immortal, they were a long-lived lot nonetheless. There was a healer who lived on the outskirts of the wilds of his realm who’d been making tisanes and poultices for the mortals, generation after generation, for a good two hundred years. The mortals, in their typically oblivious sort of way, hadn’t seemed to notice that the woman did not seem to age. It did not, therefore, stand to reason that Ember would have had to experience the loss of her mother so young.

“My father was a respected man in the village, with some authority. He had a great deal of land and a well-run house, but my mother had seen the terror that was to come. There was no changing its course.”

Those fabulous violet eyes are sad as they stare into his own blue ones. “You know, some scholars theorize that an impetus for the Salem Witch Trials was a land dispute between the Putnams and some of their neighbours. My mother knew it would be only a matter of time, after they had started, before they would come for all of us. She loved my father, and made him promise to send me away, to my grandfather’s home. A servant snuck me out of the house in the middle of the night, and she was arrested the next day. And though he tried, in the ways he could understand– with money, and with threats and begging– to save her, my father couldn’t spare her from the hangman’s noose. He left town after and never came back, dying a few years later. My grandfather says his heart was broken, and he’d lost the will to live. He raised me, after. There are a few places, such as this church, built to commemorate that time. I’ve visited most.”

They step out of the church into the cold, the soft swell of song echoing behind their backs, and Ember shoots him an ironic smile. “Your curiosity is sated now, I hope. I suppose this could be considered an odd first date of sorts. Considering all the run-ins we’ve had up til now, it would almost have to be, wouldn’t it?” 

“Oh, but if it were so, I’d have to…” In a fluid motion, he shrugs out of his coat, wraps it around her shoulders. It’s pale golden-brown and light as linen, but the elven tailoring makes its fabric warmer than cashmere fleece. A smile crosses his features as his fingers linger by her shoulders, in comfort as much as anything else. “To be a gentleman, you know?”

She clasps her hand over his wrist, then leans up, close enough that her breath fans over his lips, a whispered spell. The illusion doesn’t jar its way into their reality harshly; he simply has the odd sensation of blinking and wandering into a different world– one in which the sun shines hotly overhead and the sky is a hard tile blue and his ears echo with the sound of warm seas lapping sandy shores and the caws of tropical birds. The warmth and magic fades after a moment, after she steps back again, no longer so close that they could almost be kissing, but there’s a mischievous smile on her face rather than that sad gaze, and that’s almost better than a kiss. 

“Well, since you’re showing off on our date, I suppose I must do the same.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jareth: Jadeite  
> Ember: Rei


	13. Lost Girls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for this chapter: mentions of drug abuse and overdose, prostitution, death, domestic violence including implied sexual assault. Nothing super explicit but definitely not very happy themes. As usual, names in the end notes.

Every one is different, and difficult, but this one particularly so. 

The paramedics wheel in a young woman who must have been pretty once, with a face ravaged by the lines etched by cheap cosmetics and hard drugs behind the oxygen mask. The hair is brassy blonde, the type which comes from a cheap box, with dull dark roots showing, teased into a somewhat pitiful attempt at glamour. Between that and the skimpy outfit– too short for the winter chill– it doesn’t take much deduction on the part of the intake staff to figure out her profession. The nurse taking her vitals looks at her with a mix of pity and slight revulsion, and Desirée can all but read her thoughts. 

_Another hooker. Another drug overdose. What a waste of a life._

Desirée mostly ignores the exchanges between the intake staff– who found her and under what type of condition, whether she had any ID or known medical history, if there was anyone to call for her, and the numerous rapid-fire questions that mortals always had in the face of impending death– and edges closer to the gurney. 

The woman’s eyes pop open, pupils blown pitch-black, almost swallowing the hazel of the irises. It’s as though she senses Desirée’s presence– and that in itself is tragic enough. A hard life might have aged her prematurely in certain ways, but she couldn’t be a day over twenty-two. 

“BP’s 210 over 120, heart rate’s 140 BPM, blood’s in the lab but she admits she took both crack and ecstasy tonight, and God knows what else might have been mixed in there. No ID but she was called in by another working girl who called her Tawny. Probably not her real name, though.” Behind her, the intake nurse is rattling off facts to the physician, whose nametag reads “Dr. Adam King” and whose eyes are blue and startlingly compassionate behind a pair of thin, wire-framed glasses. Desirée largely ignores the medical personnel buzzing around her like industrious bees, and bends over the woman. 

“My name’s not really Tawny.” The voice is just a whisper, weak and raspy from ruined vocal cords. “It’s Samantha. Samantha Barringer. I’m twenty-one.”

“Samantha. I’m Adam. It’s nice to meet you.” Behind her, the doctor’s voice is soft, soothing and non-judgmental, as though the young woman just bumped into him in a coffee shop somewhere, rather than dying from a drug overdose in front of his very eyes. If nothing else, Desirée has to commend him for his bedside manner. It is undoubtedly the kindest that another human has been to this girl in a very long time. 

The doctor goes to work– futile work, certainly– but it speaks to his work ethic and dedication that he does it, anyway. Desirée steps closer to the bed, smooths back the girl’s too-brassy hair away from her clammy forehead, being careful not to touch her skin. Even so, she can sense the burning heat emanating from it. The emergency room detoxification procedures are all in place now– the doctor and his staff certainly work fast here– but it won’t be enough in the end. Samantha seems to know, and though she’s intensely dehydrated, her body still has enough water to produce tears which mar the mascara on her eyelashes to a smudge of black underneath her dilated eyes. Underneath the thin hospital blanket, her limbs twitch spasmodically. Desirée lays a hand over one of Samantha’s, and it stills, the IV needle in that arm coming to a rest. 

“I’m so tired,” Samantha murmurs, staring up at Desirée with her young-old face. “I’m scared. I don’t want it to hurt any more.”

“It won’t,” Desirée promises her. She feels a kinship– something almost sisterly– with Samantha, and it can mean only one thing, and that, more than anything else, saddens her. “I’ll be here for you, and you won’t ever be alone again.”

That much, at least, is true. Young mortal women lost in what was meant to be the prime of their lives could remain– by their choice– on Earth, to guide the passing of others so that it could be easier, gentler than their own. She knows that Samantha Barringer would be no more– the drug-and-prostitution-ravaged remains would be interred in a cemetery somewhere with a headstone that said very little– but the spirit of what she once was would stay behind. In as little as a few days, Desirée would see her as she was meant to look– eternal, timelessly young again, in sinless white. Perhaps Samantha would stay here, or perhaps she’d wander off to another place. Hospitals were everywhere in this city– ditto nursing homes, hospices, rehabilitation centers… Perhaps Samantha would even find her way into the dirty alleys of the city’s meanest streets that had been her home, and bring a light to the end of some very long, dark tunnels of the most forgotten mortals’ lives. 

“I think you have the right of it there.” Kafziel’s voice is deep and tranquil, but for once, she’d been so lost in her own thoughts that she had not even sensed his approach. Perhaps– perhaps had she been human, still, she would have jumped, or quailed. But instead, she turns, tilts her face up to meet Kafziel’s eyes, knowing that she can’t quite muster up a smile for him this time, knowing that he won’t mind. 

“She’s so young.” Behind them, the activity by the hospital bed has sped up to a frenzy, machines beeping frenetic doom. “Life has been so unkind to her. She never had a chance.”

“No, she didn’t.” Kafziel doesn’t contradict her statement, and the softest of sighs crosses his lips. “It brings back the past for you.”

Desirée dips her head in the faintest of nods. A lifetime ago– so many centuries. A man named Antoine with a fair face and a black heart, playing cards with her father. A lost wager, a hellish agreement. Desirée had been given to him, knowing little more than that he was wealthy and her father owed him a sum of money, and he’d seen her and deemed her a reasonable substitute for the debt. 

The marriage had been almost pleasant at first. Antoine lavished her with the finest gowns and jewels, parading her around town like a favored pet on a golden tether. He complimented her beauty– the gold of her hair, the gracefulness of her hands. If he was a bit rough with her in the bedchamber, it had been much as her mother had warned might be the case. “Not every man is a considerate husband, but if you please him well enough, you two can get on well enough.”

But she could never quite please him well enough. Laughing too freely, or gracing the servants with an undeserved smile. Bringing home a lost kitten. Disagreeing with him about politics. The first time he struck her, she’d been shocked– not so much by the pain of his fist striking flesh, but by the vicious gleam in his eyes– he’d _wanted_ her to know that she would never be loved.

The last time, she’d been with child, conceived on a terrible night when Antoine had drunk himself into cruelty but not not unconsciousness. She’d been too scared to tell him, but the doctor– impassive and pragmatically aware of who held the power and purse-strings in the household– had been quick to congratulate the father-to-be. Antoine had raged at her, clearly forgetting his own transgressions of the past few months. The shove he’d given her had not even been particularly hard, but she’d lost her footing on the stairs. Even through the terror, the pain and blood, she’d felt a long-awaited relief. 

A hand comes down on her bowed head, gentle and strangely familiar. “You were so young and lovely,” Kafziel murmurs, carding his elegant fingers through her hair for a long, breathless moment before stepping back, his eyes as bleak and haunted as her own. “I could have taken you with me, you know, but– you had loved life, so much, before. All the things, great and small, on Earth. And had I taken you– taken that from you, he would have won.”

“So here you are, now,” Desirée reaches up, covers the hand lingering by her face with her own. His skin doesn’t wither under her touch like a mortal’s. It feels pleasantly warm, like sunlight on a cold day, and all of the sudden, she’s not afraid, for once, about seeming over-familiar. “You wait for me, too. You’ve waited a long time.”

“You have found your peace, and perhaps some happiness again.” Kafziel smiles his fleeting, beautiful smile. “For that, I can wait some more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Desirée: Minako  
> Adam: Endymion  
> Kafziel: Kunzite  
> (Bonus: Antoine: Ace Kaitou/Adonis)


	14. Piano

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This directly follows the events of the last chapter. Prompted by Guppy. Names, per usual, are at the end.

He’d last slept perhaps twenty hours ago, and though the young lady had already been doomed by the time she’d arrived at the hospital, the fact that she died under his watch still weighs heavily on him. In her final conscious moments, she’d looked so tired, yet almost relieved, and that death seemed to be the better alternative to the life that she’d had was the saddest part of all. 

Dr. Adam King scrubs a weary hand over his face, almost forgetting the reading glasses still perched precariously on his nose, and walks out into the cold winter night. He should go home. Go to bed. Wrap both arms around the lovely, sleeping wife undoubtedly dreaming away in their bed and let the scent of roses in her golden hair lull him to sleep. But in this mood, try though he might, he’d probably wake her, and then she’d demand to know what was wrong, and then she’d be sad with him, her pure heart unable to countenance that sorry, dismal life which had ended that night. And Angela– Angela deserved only happiness. 

He walks out of the hospital compound and down the street, letting the wind and cold clear his head, and glances up at random to find himself at the door of a 24-hour cafe that he’s never visited before. A strange thing– and here he’d thought he knew every place which served quick and easy food and drink at odd hours of the night within a ten-block radius. It’s a grubby little place called “The Kismet Kafe” and the neon light in the second K is flickering badly, but something about it almost seems to beckon him. And then, as soon as he pushes the door open, he hears it.

Soft, melancholy piano music coming from a dim corner. It’s a shabby little upright with yellowed keys that has no business whatsoever sounding so lovely and lonely. The player’s back is turned to him, but Adam vaguely makes out a slim build in a sharply tailored jacket and long whorls of dark-gold hair. An almost-androgynous build– either a slender young man or a tall, athletic woman. There was something compelling about the pianist though– something familiar and magnetic. 

The piece ends on a soft, wistful note like a sigh, and the pianist stands, turns around, and now Adam recognizes the face. Tilted green eyes and sharp cheekbones. “Oh, hello. You’re Raina’s friend, I met you at the wedding.”

“And fancy seeing you here,” the man– _Zhen_ , his mind recalls– lifts a white ceramic mug off the top of the piano in a sort-of-toast. “It is quite late, isn’t it? Even for workaholic doctor types like yourself and my lovely one. Even she left work quite some time ago for the gym and swimming pool.” And perhaps if Adam had been less tired, he would have wondered more at why Dr. Raina Mariner would have seen fit to visit the gym at half-past one in the morning.

“I just left work. I suppose I could use some coffee before heading home. It’s been a long day.”

“Well, my friend, the coffee here is strong enough to power a car battery, but you look as though you could use it, if you don’t mind my saying so. Allow me.” Soon enough, another ceramic cup– inky-black coffee against white stoneware, is set down in front of Adam, along with a muffin in a greasy paper wrapper. The coffee is strong and a bit burnt, the muffin is banana-nut, slightly over-sweet and slightly stale, and yet both seem to fit perfectly for that time and place. A bit tired and worn, yet valiant. Zhen gives him a long, appraising look (and why do those sharp, almost-feral green eyes give him such an odd sense of Déjà vu?), and seats himself back at the piano.

The piece he plays is soft and low, vaguely familiar, somehow serene and sorrowful at the same time. Adam finds himself finishing coffee and muffin quickly and in complete silence, his body belatedly recognizing its own need for some nourishment since his last meal– a good ten hours ago, and when the music stops, he manages an almost-smile at Zhen. 

“Thanks. I guess I was a bit hungry, and you play very well. What song was that?”

“The Swan, by Camille Saint-Saens.” Zhen tilts his tawny-golden head to the side and gives Adam another long, appraising look. “They believed, for the longest time, that swans– generally rather quiet and unmusical in life– will sing something beautiful and haunting when they die. A final, glorious farewell– for of course something so beautiful and blameless and pure would be destined for paradise, upon its passing.” 

Adam blinks at the odd explanation, stares down at the dregs of muddy coffee grounds in the bottom of his cup. There’s something almost surreal about all this– the friendly but enigmatic acquaintance, the oddly ambient yet unfamiliar cafe, the poignant music drawing out the emotional turmoil of the night– painful, yet cleansing like peroxide disinfecting a festering wound. It isn’t much, and perhaps only a detour of two blocks and fifteen minutes, but it gives him just enough strength, both physical and emotional, to make his way home. 

Perhaps something of that shows in his face, because Zhen smiles as though in approval, before raising an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you be heading home soon, my friend? I’m sure that your lovely wife would be quite sad to wake and find herself alone.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Adam sets down his empty coffee cup and has the wherewithal to proffer a hand for the other man. Zhen’s handshake is warm and steely-strong. “Thanks for the coffee and the talk.”

“It was what you needed,” Zhen remarks cryptically, standing and walking over to the door, pushing it open. “Take care of yourself, doctor.”

Adam makes a noise of assent, and heads for home, where he takes a quick shower and falls into the deep sleep of exhaustion almost the moment his head hits the pillow. He wakes the next day rested, and after a cozy morning making love to his beautiful wife, he feels ready to take on another day of chaos and challenges and perhaps even tragedy at work, and walks down the street towards the hospital compound from the subway station with a light enough step, taking those familiar few blocks.

He frowns, though, two blocks away from the hospital, the spot where he could have sworn was a dingy little coffeeshop. There’s nothing there but a hot dog cart on a stingy stretch of pitted parking lot, its proprietor hawking his wares with a loud Brooklyn twang. No Kismet Kafe with its flickering neon sign. No piano music. 

_Well, isn’t that the strangest thing?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adam: Endymion/Mamoru  
> Zhen: Zoisite  
> Angela: Usagi  
> Raina: Ami


	15. Bandages

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompter: Adrianna Sharp  
> Prompt: Bandages, Ami, Kunzite

She feels the presence of someone else in the room by the heaviness of the air, the slight change in the temperature and pressure. A blip on a barometer, perhaps, but it’s not because of the coming snow. It’s a closed examination room and her back is to the still-locked door, but a quick glance over her shoulder reveals nothing.

Raina frowns, then turns around, searching the room for something – _someone_ – unseen, and fixes her gaze at the spot where the shift in the air is the strongest. “Show yourself, if you please, and state your purpose.”

There is a brief flicker in the fluorescent light overhead, and then, gradually, the outline of a tall, stalwart figure appears, sliding into focus in the form of a man in a long black trench coat, with a shock of platinum hair and a flawless face that is almost completely impassive except for the tightness at the corners of the solemn gray eyes. He does not introduce himself, but only one type of being has this self-same air of light and _gravitas_ , even sans the glowing halo and wings.

The angel does, however, unfurl his wings after a moment, and that is when Raina’s eyes widen with shock. They’re huge and luminous, almost over-bright in the Pediatrics office, and at the moment, spotted with bright-red rivulets of blood. “Oh! You’re injured. What happened?” It’s certainly not something that even one with as much experience as she would encounter often.

The angel’s symmetrical lips curve in some approximation of a grimace. “ _Ifrit_. Several of them, actually. There was a gang shootout in the bad part of town.” 

“Ah.” That was simple enough, then. The winged demons spawned from the blood shed during murders of evil souls, and an event like a gang shootout would have given rise to scores of the wicked, fire-breathing creatures. “And you had to deal with them before they spread out from the origin point, caused any damage and destruction.”

Raina moves quickly and instinctually, gathering up supplies. In the case of mundane mortal injuries and ailments, perhaps she would have reached for peroxide and acetaminophen, but this is altogether different. She pulls out a polished sphere of obsidian roughly the size of a baseball and slides it into the angel’s hand. “Hold onto this. This may sting after a minute.”

The stone glimmers a sullen black-red for a moment as the angel closes his fingers around it, but Raina pays it no mind as she threshes, mixes, stirs. _Calendula, sage, eucalyptus, bay laurel, angelica, yarrow_. The mixture bubbles, then settles in its silver bowl. She dips in strips of clean linen, then wraps them one at a time around the sinews and joints of those blood-spattered wings. Almost instantaneously, a faint hint of sulphur smoke fills the air like the aftermath of hellfire, and though the angel’s fingers clench, white-knuckled, around the stone sphere, he doesn’t so much as hiss in discomfort as crystal and potion work in tandem to draw out the toxicity of his demon-borne wounds. The formerly shiny surface of her medicinal bowl smears and spots black with the tarnish of the demon-venom expelling into the air. By the time she ties on the last bandage, the bowl is more black than silver, and she takes the time to soak both that and her fingers in a mix of salt and soda and holy water. Meanwhile, the angel flexes his wings experimentally, then affords her a faint smile. 

“You have my thanks, Daughter of Water. I feel better already.”

“You’re welcome,” Raina murmurs. “I suppose that the staff in the ER have their hands full at the moment with the injured mortals.”

The angel dips his head in brief acknowledgement. “But no one dying. Those who would have crossed– crossed, _there_. I didn’t bring them here.”

There’s almost something protective in his tone, and Raina’s mind shoots to the other non-human that she’d met at this self-same hospital, recently. _The Harbinger with the sweet smile and golden hair._ Maybe the angel knew her, too. Knew her well enough to wish to spare her the task of crossing over the damned and undeserving. The thought of that makes her smile to herself for a moment before she turns back to the angel, meeting his calm gray eyes with her own blue ones. 

“I hope that when next we meet, it will be under better circumstances, Watchman.” Raina ventures, then cocks her head to the side. “You’ll be right as rain by tomorrow, but maybe you should steer clear of her, tonight. She’ll worry.”

If her comment surprises him any, he doesn’t say so, even if one of his eyebrows lifts up for the briefest of seconds. “I will keep that in mind, Daughter of Water.”

“Raina. My name is Raina.”

He nods, and it isn’t so much that he disappears as he fades from view slowly, like a chalk-drawing in rain that glows for a moment. “And mine is Kafziel. Thank you, once again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raina: Ami  
> Kafziel: Kunzite


	16. New Year's Eve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by Ascella-Star. "I'm a princess that lost her fairy tale, can you help me find it?" M/K. Names will be at the end of the chapter as usual.

The city that never sleeps is especially festive tonight, a sea of bright lights and giddy anticipation. Times Square is ablaze as the people of New York– locals and visitors alike, wind down the clock for the last night of the year.

Of course, one can’t exactly expect the hospital to be quite as jubilant in atmosphere, but at the very least, Desirée thinks, no one has come in to die tonight. Thus far, it isn’t anyone’s final moments in anyone’s final year, and surely that counts for something.

The hospital’s a good two miles (and goodness only knows how many minutes in this traffic) away from the epicenter of the festivities, but from her vantage point at the window, Desirée can just about see the glittering lights in the distance, the throng of frolicking mortals. She can all but sense the excitement, and the hopeful joy in the air lights her eyes, dimples her face.

She hears the whoosh of wings against the still air, and doesn’t even try to hide her smile. It has been several days since she’d seen him last, but it seems right to have this moment together, here and now, as the world around them celebrates the new rather than mourns the old and dying.

“I’m enjoying the lights out there,” she says quietly by way of greeting. “It’s just about an hour before the New Year begins.”

Kafziel’s lips quirk in their now-familiar faint smile. He’s not wearing a dark trench coat today, but rather a formal three-piece suit, silvery-gray over a snow-white shirt, with a spray of greenery in the lapel button. He evidently decided against a tie, however, and the column of his throat is tan against the open vee of white linen. It’s a starkly attractive, distinguished look, as though he, too, is celebrating the New Year in his somewhat formal way. “So it is. It’s the best time for new hopes and new dreams, as I understand.”

“Certainly so, for the mortals,” Desirée muses, glancing sidelong at him through her eyelashes. “Is it wrong of me to rejoice that it is not a busy night, here?”

“Not at all.” Kafziel intones. “At the bottom of their hearts, all mortals want the same thing tonight, really– to live and see the dawn of another year. I don’t see why, just at the moment, we can’t grant them such.”

It’s as good as a promise of an evening’s reprieve, a solemn vow from one who’d never, ever go back on his word, and her smile spreads across her face. In the distance, the wave of excitement grows as the clock ticks ever-closer to the witching hour of midnight. Desirée watches through the frosty windowpane, with the faint warmth of a sheltering wing behind her slender back. “People generally take this moment to make promises for the New Year, share their goals and dreams, I think.”

“Yes. Resolutions, I believe. An affirmation to attempt a better-lived life in the coming year. Not always the best of luck or success, but generally the best of intentions.” There is a saying about good intentions and the damned, but he tactfully doesn’t mention it now. Instead, he glances down into her slightly upturned face, gray eyes calm and curious and almost warm. “Do you have any?”

That question startles Desirée into a laugh, short and gently ironic. “I’m rather not suited for that, wouldn’t you say? One who aids the dying with their final passage perhaps _shouldn’t_ have any resolutions.”

“I don’t see you that way.” Kafziel says reflectively, and his eyes are soft as they gaze down into her face. “One who meets you would see a princess, I think, rather than a demon.”

She ducks her head, the part of her that still recalls human emotions such as embarrassment and esteem reacting to his words and something in his tone. “A princess who’s lost her fairy tale, perhaps. I daresay even you can’t help me find it.”

 _A woman doomed in love, in life. A spirit bringing warmth to every scrap of humanity she can, bequeathing the peace and caring she’d never had in life, in death._ In the distance, the clock begins to chime the hour of midnight and the ball begins to drop. Kafziel gives it one brief, brooding look before lifting a hand to his lapel. Carefully, he tucks the two sprigs of fragrant green into her golden hair, one behind each ear, and much to her surprise, nothing withers as it contacts her skin. _Evergreen. Eternally and forever._

“Rosemary, for remembrance. And Myrtle, for love.” His fingers brush against her temples, then her cheeks, gently tilting her face up to his. “You should know that you shall have both, eternally and forever.”

In a packed and noisy Square glowing with light and effervescent with new hopes, countless people kiss each other at the final stroke of midnight, sloppy and impulsive and exuberant, raucous and yet perhaps meaningless. 

In a deserted and silent hospital corridor, by a narrow window, lit with sterile fluorescents, Kafziel of the Watchmen kisses a golden-haired fairy-woman called Desirée, chastely and carefully and without a word. It’s a blink of a moment in countless lifetimes, and an eternity of memory and devotion condensed into a split-second.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Desirée: Minako  
> Kafziel: Kunzite


	17. Hypothermia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Apsara for helping me plot this chapter! Prompt: Hypothermia. Mainly because of the weather currently being experienced by the American Midwest! As usual, names of the characters at the end of the chapter.

A handful of chance meetings had turned into a rather mundane, mortal exchange of phone numbers, and that had in turn become almost a highlight of her day. Jareth Sylvane of the _Ælf_ -kine, contrary to the rather supercilious, aloof remoteness which characterised most of his kin, was witty and sociable. More than once, Ember had to bite down a smile, usually at the most inopportune of times, at something he’d texted her throughout the course of the week. And so it was that on this chilly January afternoon, she’d agreed to meet up with him in Central Park for a stroll and a bite to eat afterwards. He was wrapping up work at a job-site not too far, and she’d been uptown visiting a relation. 

She sees him standing by Sherman’s monument, golden hair glowing in the winter sunlight, his lanky good looks accentuated by the dark jeans and well-fitted blazer he wore under his coat, a messenger bag slung over one shoulder. He turns before she can even call out his name, and smiles in welcome. 

“I hope the day finds you well.”

“It has been fairly decent, thus far.” Ember tilts her head up to look him in the face. Her black boots have slight heels, but the top of her head still only comes up to his chin. “It’s a cold day for walking, but at least the sun is shining.”

“I could give you my coat again, if you’re cold.” Jareth’s smile is all warm blue eyes and white teeth and good humour. “Did you have a good visit with your grandfather?”

“He’s an irascible old scoundrel who amused himself last week by engaging in a prank war with the kids who live down the hall from him. Cooked up a whole batch of Alchemist’s gold and littered the sidewalk with disappearing coins. I’d tell him to grow up, but I doubt that’s possible, at his age.”

“It’s not a bad thing to be young-at-heart,” Jareth remarks in his easy, unruffled way. “It gives the heart much relief from the ills of the world.”

They walk at a leisurely pace through the park, and Ember is well aware that he could quickly outpace her if he so wished, with the fleet foot of the _Ælf_ -kine and their imperviousness to the chill and wind. But he keeps a relaxed pace, shortening his stride to match hers, one hand holding onto his bag, the other light against the small of her back, warm through her long coat and dress. 

She’s halfway through telling her an anecdote of some of her grandfather’s most mischievous antics when a shadow discends with the suddenness of a storm-cloud, in the very edges of her consciousness, and the dread cuts her off, mid-sentence. Her breath catches in her throat– _cold cold COLD!_ – and he immediately pauses, both hands on her shoulders, a concerned question at the tip of his tongue. 

“Pond.” She chokes out a single word and takes off at a run, and he follows hot on her heels.

**

She’s not quite fast enough, and a high, childish scream cuts through the air, quickly followed by a panicky adult one. A sled that had been skidding down the snow-covered hill slides straight into the water a good fifty feet ahead of them, and Ember’s horrified eyes see a bright-red parka bob for a split-second before it sinks like a stone. The water has to be close to frozen, and the pond is unforgivably big, unforgivably murky. A body loses temperature in cold water at twice the rate as it would in cold air. The shock of it alone could kill the child before he or she could even attempt to swim out to safety.

Before she can even react, though, she sees another figure– a slim, feminine one, wearing a navy blue coat, dash onto the bridge. The young woman clambers onto the side of the bridge with the agility of a wildcat, then dives into the icy pond with the speed of a bullet, her lithe figure barely making a splash despite the ice floes and the winter coat. At her distance, all Ember could make out of her was snow-white skin and blue-black hair, but for some reason, Jareth lets out a slow exhale next to her, as though in relief. 

“Raina.” That must be the name of the woman, and Ember wonders who she is– how Jareth knows her. His keen eyes scan the half-frozen surface of that icy water as time seems to slow to a crawl. Ember is dimly aware that the panicked nanny of the child is sobbing on her cell phone, presumably on the line with emergency services, and then a moment later, a pale hand breaks through the water’s surface– a good five hundred feet away from where she’d dove in. Ember spots a flash of red, and then both the woman and the child’s heads break through the surface. 

They’re still too far from shore, though, and though Ember cannot begin to fathom how the woman had managed to cover that distance in so short a time without so much as breaking for air, Jareth springs into action, dropping his bag onto the snowy ground and pulling it open. Mere seconds later, he has a length of construction rope tied at one end to the bough of a nearby tree, and knots the other onto the shaft of an arrow. That he had a disassembled takedown bow tucked into a compartment of his messenger bag should probably not surprise her, Ember thinks as she watches him nock the arrow, aim for the pair still in the pond, let fly. Despite the wind and the weight of the cable attached, the arrow flies true, and the woman he called Raina has one hand gripped around the shaft a moment later. In the distance, they can hear the wail of approaching sirens, but by the time the paramedics burst onto the scene, Jareth has already pulled the two onto shore. 

Ember takes a deep breath, concentrates, whispers the spell. A flash of heat, and the water dries off their clothes. Now at this distance, she meets the fathomlessly blue eyes of the woman called Raina, and it all makes sense. She doesn’t have the chance to question why a lake-maiden would be found wandering around the paths of Central Park before the child’s nanny, babbling tearful thanks, comes bearing down on them from one direction and the paramedics from another. 

One of the paramedics evidently recognizes the lake-maiden, though, and raises an eyebrow. “Dr. Mariner.”

“I saw her fall in,” Raina-- Dr. Mariner states simply. Her voice is calm and placid as deep water. “I know how fast a body can freeze in cold water, so I had to get to her as quickly as I could.” An enigmatic smile crosses her tranquil, lovely face. “Someone on-shore helped to tow us onto dry land.” She bends down, looks into the cold but conscious face of the child she’d saved. “You are a lucky girl today. I couldn’t get your sled out though, I’m afraid.”

The next few moments are pandemonium, as the paramedics hover, taking their vitals and wrapping the little girl up in blankets. By now, a small crowd has gathered, and by silent agreement, Jareth and Ember duck through the throng and away. She knows, by her own steadying heartbeat, that the girl will be all right, and unconsciously moves closer to Jareth as she lets out a slow breath. 

“Thanks for following me,” she says at length, once they’re far enough away that no one was around to overhear and wonder. “You probably saved her life, that girl.”

“We all did. You, me, and my enigmatic gym buddy, Raina.” Jareth’s palm is rough with bow-calluses, warm as it wraps around her own. He smiles down into her face as he gives her hand a squeeze, laces his fingers through hers. “We were all at the right place, together. It’s almost like fate.” 

Ember lets out a shaky breath. The future, with its myriad uncertainties and variables, can be a terrifying thing to think about. But the present– this very moment, still coming down from raging adrenaline and the relief in saving a life– holding onto him and borrowing a bit of his strength and self-assurance– is close to perfect. “If you say so. I should probably buy you dinner. To celebrate, or something.” 

“I’ll be happy to go to dinner with you, but I think we’d be celebrating different things.” Jareth gives her hand another squeeze, tugs her infinitesimally closer. “You’d be celebrating survival, I think, and I’d be celebrating destiny. Because without that, there’d be no survival.” A smile crosses his features again. “So… pick the place, but I think I’ll buy you dinner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jareth: Jadeite  
> Ember: Rei  
> Raina: Ami


	18. Snow and Salt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by Adrianna Sharp: Snow, Cat, Soup.   
> The quote in the middle of this chapter is from Narcissus and Goldmund, by Hermann Hesse.   
> This chapter is rated PG-13 for fade-to-black sexytimes and the f-word. Names are, of course, at the end of the chapter.

“And in other news, six-year-old Katrina Davis had a close call today in Central Park. The first-grader’s sled slid straight into the pond, and she likely would have drowned or frozen to death had it not been for the quick and heroic intervention of a local pediatrician. Dr. Raina Mariner, Head of Pediatrics at Bellevue, dove in after little Katrina, and in what the responding officers are calling a miracle, managed not only to find the little girl in 40-degree water, but pull her to shore before hypothermia could set in…”

Zhen is halfway down the block before he realizes that he’s moved. It’s mid-afternoon and the streets are packed with people coming and going from all directions, and it would be too exhausting to cast an illusion large enough to move all of them out the way. The people going about their business don’t pay any attention as a man ducks into an alley, or when what appears vaguely to be a stray cat darts out past them, rushing between pedestrians’ legs and the tires of cars stopped at traffic lights. Perhaps had they been more astute, they would have noticed that the tracks left in the snow were the wrong shape, or wondered why any animal would be out in this weather– in broad daylight, no less.

But Zhen can evade almost as well as he can enthrall, and he jumps aboard the next ferry to Staten Island brushing improbably bits of snow and road salt out of the curls of his hair, sick with worry. It is illogical, but logic has no place here and now. 

_I am of the line of the Gwragedd Annwn._ She’d whispered those words– her secret– against his skin when they’d danced cheek to cheek on their second date, and it explained a lot, really. Water-Fae with an affinity for the Healing Arts. On a rational level, he knows full well that Raina would not have leapt into an ice-covered pond had she not been reasonably confident that she’d survive the ordeal. A sensible girl, his lovely one. And yet…

Zhen had befriended a German writer in those fraught years between the first and second World Wars– one who had then gone on to become a Nobel Laureate– and had been amongst the first to read what would be known as that writer’s _Magnus Opus_. Zhen had greatly admired his work without finding much in common with it– the writing had been all too philosophical and metaphysical to relate to in the here and now– but just at present, he recalls one famous line, and understands it so deeply that it aches. 

_If I know what love is, it is because of you…_

He whispers it to himself, heart pounding, fist raised and poised to knock, and it’s the height of rudeness, really. Even the most socially awkward of mortal men would– hopefully– have the wherewithal to call first. He has no idea if she’s even home. It _would_ be just like her, really, to go straight to work after that harrowing ordeal as though nothing could possibly be wrong. 

But the door swings open a second before his hand could touch it, and Zhen finds himself staring down into Raina’s lovely, startled face. Her lips part on an exhale of his name and she’s very much alive and her hair is still damp and he can still see beads of water on her long, dark eyelashes, and that just about breaks him. 

He’d been decorous enough on the first, and second– and fifth, and ninth– dates, giving this softspoken, sweet-faced siren no more than gentle clasps of the hand and a chaste kiss goodnight at her door. He didn’t bother her during her working hours no more than she bothered him during his. But now he brashly pushes his way through the gap of the open door, both hands reaching for her, and a blink later finds that door kicked shut, her back against it, his face buried in wet hair that tastes like snow. She runs colder than he does– chilly fingers, smooth, cool lips– but now he tugs her close with all his strength, as though maybe if neither could tell where she ended and he began, some of his warmth could leach into her skin and body. 

“I’m all right,” she whispers against his neck, soothingly. “I’m here– I’m here.” 

Those last words are spoken to reassure him, and she leans back just far enough to smile up into his face, brush a light kiss against the corner of his tense mouth. “I’ve certainly swam in rougher waters than this.” 

“I saw you on the news,” he mumbles, turning his face just enough that his lips meet hers squarely. Once, then again, and again for good measure. “I didn’t think… I just ran.” The adrenaline is finally, finally giving way, but not to anything even remotely resembling exhaustion. One hand clenches almost too-tightly in her snow-damp hair, and the other anchors at the small of her back. “You still feel cold.”

The corner of her beautiful mouth quirks up. “I’m always cold, compared to you.” Her cold fingers stroke up his neck, pause against the pulse in his throat. “Your heartbeat is racing.” 

“I had a-ways to run,” he dips his head. Some part of him– a decent, decorous voice definitely at odds with his intrinsic nature, argues that it’s not gentlemanly to keep kissing her. It’s self-serving at this point; she’s not the cavorting sort, and she deserves to be _respected_ and _cherished_ and _revered_ – anything but _devoured, mauled, fucked_ against her own front door. But he can’t bring himself to stop, not when her lashes droop in the most incredibly seductive fashion, not when she licks her bottom lip in a completely maddening way when they part for breath before her cold fingers skim under his shirt to find hot skin.

Much later, he manages to walk the short distance to the couch in the living room, and sinks down onto it, with her still curled up in his arms. Her apartment is small but tasteful, and he spots a fleecy throw blanket in shades of blue that he wraps around her naked shoulders as her lips part over the skin of his jaw. “You taste like salt,” she says by way of explanation at his burning gaze, and the smile which crosses her kiss-swollen lips quivers with tenderness. “Road salt and a racing heartbeat. Did you really worry so much about me, then?”

He should give her words– something to let her know that the innumerable years he’d lived and the countless women he’d met along the way were simply a path which led to her. But he doesn’t want to woo her with someone else’s words, even Hermann Hesse’s, so he nuzzles his nose against hers, manages a smile that might have been rakish were it not for the devotion. “Well. Maybe I should have stopped to get you some soup on my way. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zhen: Zoisite  
> Raina: Ami


	19. Pasta

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Apsara and Satine86 for their help with plotting and stuff for this chapter! As usual, names are all on the bottom.

Piccoli’s is the type of old-fashioned Italian restaurant that did not aspire towards either Michelin stars or a formidable Instagram following. Indeed, it is tiny and quiet by Manhattan standards, with red-checked tablecloths and dim, flickering candles. Bottles of herb-infused olive oils gleam dully against the walls, and the man behind the host’s podium is a hulking brute dressed in unrelieved black with arms like Easter hams. He gives Ember a deferential nod, though, as she walks in through the door.

“Ms. Ward. Good to see you.”

“You too, Little Tony.” Ember affords the bruiser a gentle smile. “Table for two, please.”

The ironically-monikered Little Tony gives Jareth a long, suspicious once-over and grunts something incomprehensible before leading them to a booth and setting down a pair of battered menus. Jareth pulls one of the menus towards himself, then arches an eyebrow at Ember.

“‘Little’ Tony? He’s six and a half feet tall and built like a Dwarven fortress.” 

“It’s short for Antonio. His dad, also named Antonio, who answers to ‘Big Tony’, owns this place,” Ember explains. “Big Tony’s a good friend of my grandfather’s. They became poker buddies after Big Tony retired from his lifelong career and opened this restaurant.” She leans forward, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I’m pretty sure my grandfather didn’t want to win any money that might have questionable origins, if you understand my meaning. But Big Tony’s always been very kind to me. I’m sure you’ll meet him later.”

Jareth tries his utmost to match the solemnity of her tone, but he can’t quite hold in a grin. “Is that a threat, milady wise-woman?”

“Not at all.” There’s a glint in her eyes which bespeaks her own amusement. “Big Tony can be a bit opinionated, to be sure, but he’s a lovely fellow, and he makes a spectacular red sauce from his _Nonna_ ’s recipe. I always get the spaghetti and the house Chianti.”

“I think I shall do the same.” They place their orders, and their wine comes first, in a squat bottle encased in a traditional straw basket. Jareth fills both their glasses, then raises his in a toast. “To your vision, and all the lives it will save.”

“To your bow, and all the lives it will save as well,” Ember clinks her glass against his, then takes a slow sip. “I don’t suppose that particular bow is what you’d carry, back at home, but then again, even in New York City, a man with a six-foot longbow is bound to be noticed and not in a good way.”

“It’s not what I’d carry back amidst my kin, no, but it does the job well enough. As far as home goes, that’s been here for the last twelve years.” Jareth leans back in his chair and smiles. “It’s certainly different, but I think I enjoy it, for the most part.”

“Where were you from, before?” 

“I was born, quite some years ago, in the house of my father. That is within a settlement on what’s now known to be the Forest of East Derbyshire, in the East Midlands, in England.” A nostalgic smile crosses his finely-cut lips. “I’d practiced archery as a boy with one of my first mortal friends, who’d someday be known as Robin of Locksley. Eventually, however, some of us crossed the ocean during the age of exploration, but instead of settling in the places where your parents had lived, we’d gone further west. There’s land still mostly untouched by mortal hands out in what they’d consider the Pacific Northwest, in the wilds of the North Cascades, and I’ve had family there for the last few centuries.”

“And so you moved out here twelve years ago.” They’d been given a basket of fresh-baked bread with their wine, and Ember cuts a slice, dips it in greenish-gold olive oil flecked with minced basil. “It’s quite different from where you’ve lived before.”

Before Jareth can even reply, a heavy tread sounds by the table, followed by two plates of spaghetti redolent of slow-stewed tomato sauce being set down on the table by a beefy pair of hands, olive-toned, one bearing a heavy gold ring on the pinkie. The pinkie ring glitters in the candlelight as that hand travels up and gently pats the top of Ember’s head. “Ah, Ember, _passerotta mia_ , I heard that you brought a friend with you.”

“Big Tony.” Ember accepts a hearty buss on one cheek, then the other, then gives Jareth a droll look. “Big Tony, this is Jareth Sylvane. Jareth, this is Antonio Piccoli, who goes by Big Tony. I think you’ve already met his son and heir, Little Tony.”

Big Tony has salt-and-pepper hair and a fantastically large and curly moustache, but Jareth can certainly see where his son had inherited his brawler’s build from. He wears a huge white apron over a flawlessly pressed suit, and his beady eyes look Jareth up and down in appraisal. “Where are you from, Mr. Jareth Sylvane?”

“I was born in England, but moved to Washington State at a young age, then came to New York twelve years ago.” Jareth gives Big Tony an abbreviated version of what he’d just told Ember, and meets those beady eyes squarely. 

“Ah. And what do you do for work?”

“I’m an architect. A friend and I have a firm– Sylvane and Vale.” Aeson Vale and his life-mate, Aelene, had traveled with him through the last century together, and Jareth had been grateful for his friends’ unconditional support, even in the unconventionality of journeying across oceans and continents. 

“Ah.” Without invitation, Big Tony plops his considerable bulk into the booth next to Ember, and steeples his fingers. Next to him, Ember looks as tiny and dainty as a little, black-clad pixie. “I think I know of your friend. He did some good work, when we put together a fund to shine up our cathedral. A bit of a quiet fellow, but good hands. And his wife’s a beautiful lady. I sat her down and gave her a tiramisu and told her she needed to get some meat on her bones.”

Jareth stifles a chuckle at the idea of the elegant, ethereal Aelene Vale being told that she needed to get some meat on her bones by someone who looked very much like an aging mafioso, perhaps with a grandfatherly pat on the head much like he’d bestowed upon Ember, earlier. Since Big Tony was clearly alive and well enough to tell the tale, Aelene must either have been amused rather than annoyed, or perhaps it had been an outstanding tiramisu. Quite possibly the latter, considering the delicious aroma of the pasta in front of him. “I will pass along your regards when I see them next, Mr. Piccoli.”

“Mmm. I suppose it’s a good thing that you have a job. And how did you two meet?”

“At a carnival. In the midway. We’ve sort of been running into each other here and there, since. After a while it seemed more reasonable just to take down each other’s numbers.” It’s a rather simplistic version of the reality, but then again, it’s also all true. 

“Mmm.” Again, that long, drawn-out monosyllable. “And what are your intentions towards my little sparrow?”

“Nothing untoward, if that’s what you mean,” Jareth answers evenly. He had expected an interrogation sooner or later, but perhaps not from a barrel-chested Italian with a moustache rivalling Teddy Roosevelt’s. “She’s a fascinating woman, and I find that I enjoy my time in her company.”

“Hmph.” Another monosyllable, slightly grumpy but not overtly hostile, and Big Tony pushes himself up to his feet. “Enjoy your pasta, you crazy kids.” He gives Ember one more affectionate head-pat, and trundles back towards the kitchen. Ember gives him a half-apologetic look even as her graceful fingers twirl noodles around the tines of her fork.

“He’s been poker buddies with my grandfather for the last five years or so.”

“I don’t begrudge someone who looks to protect you from harm, even from myself.” Jareth samples his own spaghetti. It is as delicious as advertised. Over the dim, flickering candlelight, her face is solemn and lovely. “Though, I daresay you can take care of yourself well enough.”

She sighs, and for just a moment, looks so worried that he wishes he could reach across the table and hold her close, reassure her somehow. “I feel like something is happening, and I don’t like not knowing what it is.”

He nods. Clairvoyance in any form is a gift, but never the most pleasant one, and gives its bearer a heavy cross to bear. “You knew where to be, today.”

“Perhaps, but… you were there, and me, and that lake-maiden. I’ve felt the presence and power of others that I have yet to meet. Don’t you wonder why it is that we’re all here, now? Like we’re converging upon this time and place for a reason?” Her amethyst eyes go distant, as though looking beyond this mortal plane. “Where there is great good, there will always be great evil to challenge it. Despair follows triumph like night follows day. This is the great balance of life, and I fear that the greater and stronger the light, the deeper and darker the shadow will come to encroach upon it.”

It is a gloomy thought, to be sure, and he pauses as a plate of golden-brown cannoli, dusted with confectioner’s sugar and plump with ricotta, is set down in front of them. “What’s destined will come to pass, whether for good or ill, and we simply must face it with courage and the best of intentions when the time comes.”

She looks as though she doesn’t quite like his answer, and a thin line appears between her dark brows. “It is the practice of the _Ælf_ -kine, historically, to steer clear of the trials and tribulations of mankind unless it directly affects them, I believe. You would be within your rights, and certainly within your power, to find a new home if misfortune were to befall this city, and I can’t even fault you for it, to choose life and vanish without a trace.”

They’re sitting in silence, not quite comfortable, and Jareth reaches across the table to where her left hand lays, palm-up. It’s smooth and warm under the fingers of his right hand, and the contact of palm-to-palm feels like a promise of more. “Would you believe it if I said that there’d be no life here for me, if I left?” His kind did not succumb to disease and the frailty of age like mortal men, but untimely death could come from falling in battle or dying from a broken heart. He certainly hoped for neither, but he didn’t quite have the words to explain to her that his heart and spirit were now as deeply entrenched in this time and place as the roots of a centuries-old tree in the Earth. So he simply smiles, gives her hand a quick squeeze before reaching for the cannoli. “I like it here.”

This seems to do the trick of snapping her out of her melancholy mood, and she gives him a tentative smile. “I suppose it’s true that were evil to come to this city, it’d find a formidable opponent waiting to face it. Do your colleagues wonder why you carry a bow in your work bag?”

“Aeson carries his own bow. Aelene, his wife, wears her blades strapped to her leg underneath her skirts. As for the mortals, they don’t tend to snoop through others’ belongings. Not very polite, you know?” Outside, the sky is now as dark as the dusky, candlelit interior of the restaurant. “Maybe we should pack the rest of the cannoli to go. It grows late.”

He pays for their dinner, his signature on the credit card slip graceful and elegantly lettered, leaving a generous tip in cash on the table next to his wineglass. They share a cab, and he makes sure that it drops her off first, despite the fact that her place is a-ways farther than his. The streets of Brooklyn Heights are quiet, pale with new snowfall, when she walks up to the door of the brownstone. In the silvery moonlight, she’s darkly luminous and lovely, and he lifts a hand to gently tuck a strand of her raven hair behind her ear, stroke the soft skin of her cheek.

“Good night, Ember.”

She blinks her long, black eyelashes as though trying to come to a decision, then reaches into a pocket, extracts something small and cool that she tucks into his hand before she closes his palm around it. He opens his fingers again to see a smooth-worn bit of green stone, carved with a rune.

“Jade, bearing the rune of Algiz. It’s the Elk– for protection, to ward off evil.” Her words are hurriedly spoken, almost as though she’s flustered. “You carry a bow. I carry… something of my own, also. Be careful.”

He can’t help but smile, both at her embarrassment and at her thoughtfulness. “Do you see something bad happening to me then?”

“Oh! No, nothing like that. I just… take care.” And maybe she realizes that she’s blushing and babbling a little, because she leans up, pecks his lips with her own for less than the span of a blink, so she doesn’t have to say anything else. And just as she’s about to pull away, he cups her face with both hands, the jade cool against her cheek, and brings his lips to hers for a longer, sweeter kiss. He holds her close for a few moments after their lips part, tucking the token of her care and her good heart into his coat pocket as his free hand cards through her silky hair. 

“Sleep well, Ember. Dream good dreams, and don’t worry about me.” His words are faintly muffled against her temple, but he knows she hears them, all the same. Pressing a final kiss to the crown of her head, he steps back, smiles as she unlocks the door with keys and a whisper of magic. She gives him a little wave before she disappears behind it, and then he can make out the faint sounds of pacing, of crows cawing in greeting. Ever-so-faintly, her voice comes to his ear through the barrier of the walls, only audible because of his preternatural sense of hearing, and what he hears brings an uncontrollable grin to his face.

“Oh, _stop it, you two_! Don’t look at me and gloat like that, it’s not nice!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jareth: Jadeite  
> Ember: Rei


	20. Demolition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many many thanks to the SSminibang crew for helping me plot this thing! I will attempt to post more of this fic and faster because... the senshi/shitennou mini bang 2019 is about to begin! So I will try to reach some type of conclusion to this fic before that all is set to go. As usual, names on the bottom.

The building had been abandoned and unlocked for so long that Linden never gave it any thought to a single bit of it except what– who– was on its roof. So when she approached it that evening and found a sturdy steel padlock on the main door and a sign posted stating it was slated for demolition, it threw her for a loop. One of the vagrants who’d used it as a sort of shelter was on the front stoop looking very cold and forlorn, indeed. He was an old man, who’d fought in one of the wars some decades ago, and come home unable to cope with the atrocities he’d seen without self-medicating with drugs, and though he’d certainly seen Linden in there before, he’d always been deferential– deferential and silent, avoiding direct eye contact. Perhaps his long-dormant soldier’s senses pricking at the power she carried within her. 

Now he’s the only one there who could provide some hint of answers, so Linden clears her throat. “Why are the doors locked, do you know?”

“Not up to code, and they say it’s an eyesore. They’re going to build something new here. Tall blond fellow came, put up the signs and the lock today. Kicked me out.” A sigh like the shivery sound of wind rustling through reeds escapes his chapped lips. “He gave me twenty dollars and offered to take me to a shelter of my choice. But shelters have so many _people_ in them.” The shell-shocked veteran shudders, and pulls what looks like a brand-new blanket with the tags still on– perhaps the proceeds of that twenty dollars– closer around his thin body. “I feel like I’m drowning when I’m in them.”

Linden’s lips thin, and perhaps had the vagrant been looking closely, he would have noticed a sheen of red enter the verdant green of her eyes– like the first flush of blood-red autumn on the summer trees. She could certainly solve both their problems and break that lock with little more than a twist of her hands, but it wouldn’t do to scare the homeless man any more than his demons already did. She’d brought some food and drink, as was habit, and without a thought, sacrificed her share of the chicken and dumplings and half a thermos of coffee, along with a handful of small bills out of her wallet. “Here. You eat up. And… if you’re familiar with the area, there’s an abandoned phone booth a few blocks down that way. It’s not as warm as the church, of course, and it’s a small space, but it’s closed in from the wind and rain. And there aren’t any people there.” 

The homeless man eats gratefully, and Linden asks just enough pertinent questions to satisfy basic politeness and find out what she needs to know. Once she sends the man– Billy– packing, she takes a long, hard look at the sign by the door. _Sylvane and Vale_. A fancy architectural firm uptown, from the looks of it. Memorizing the phone number listed, she looks both ways for witnesses before shrugging off her coat with a grimace. This bit wasn’t difficult, especially in moments of heightened emotion, but human-made fabrics were not meant to survive such things. The sound of ripping cotton is soft in the still air as wings rend the fabric of her sweater– not the brilliantly white, glowing ones of the angels, but the sharp-tipped, dusky-dappled ones of a raptor. She moves her rucksack to her now-taloned hands and lets the wind carry her up. 

Sir Nathalán, formerly of Stormbrook Keep, lifts his head when she lands on the rooftop, and though his eyebrows raise for a moment, he smiles, bows low. “My Lady of the Linden Wood. And before you chide me for it, surely you wouldn’t want me to be familiar– not now.” He leaves unspoken that she was late coming tonight, and that he’s not seen her in this guise– winged and cruel-clawed with the gleam of blood in her eyes– since that fateful day that she rained her wrath down upon him all those centuries ago. His tone is still respectful, though it carries no trace of fear. Linden knows that at that moment, she is the farthest thing away from beautiful, and growls to herself even as she hands him the rest of the food and drink she’d brought. 

“The door is locked. This was my only way up here.” Even her voice has changed– from the low, smooth, whiskey-and-woodsmoke timbre of a beautiful woman to something that bore in it the harsh, ringing tone of an eagle cry. “They’ve condemned this building. It’s due for demolition and there’s a padlock on the door. It’s just a matter of days before they tear it down, and then what will we do?” Her eyes glimmer like wet rubies as they stare up into his. “I know the nature of my thrall. Even stone, you’ll die if you’re destroyed. You’ll feel it when your body is broken in a quarry somewhere, even if you can’t so much as scream or shed a tear for the pain.” The dark feathers on her wingtips flutter minutely with the wind– so much higher at this height than on the ground. “I can undo the spell. Tonight. There’s no one here to see, and no one would guess the truth of it, certainly not some prissy uptown construction crew. You could get down from here, and– and _live_.” A horrible grimace that doesn’t give but the most perfunctory effort to look like a smile crosses her face. “You could be Nathan Storm, just as that angel suggested. A man of this day and age. There’s a great deal of conveniences to this time and place that you’d likely find quite enjoyable.”

He pauses, and sets down the mostly-empty thermos of coffee. There’s something different and pensive in his face, not a bit like the usual brash charm, and he reaches for her tense shoulders. His fingers are warm and stone-strong, but the touch doesn’t relax her. “You want me to– to go back, more or less, to how we were before. Before I met you.”

“Yes!” Finally, with some effort, she releases a deep breath, lets go of some of the power raging through her. The wings and claws vanish, leaving in place the figure of a tall and beautiful woman with tears sliding down her cheeks, shivering slightly as the cold wind knifes its way through the holes in the back of her shirt. “I don’t offer this lightly, you know. But I want you to live.”

Instinctually, perhaps, he takes a step closer and pulls her in, and for someone who is stone for all but these scant few hours, he is wonderfully warm as his arms wrap around her and his big hands rest over the tears in her shirt where her wings had been. “Hmm. I appreciate it, you know. That you’d offer. More than I could ever say. But I don’t think that I shall.”

She stiffens, and it is only with the centuries-long acquaintance that they’ve had– the feelings that she perhaps doesn’t have a name for but run deeper than primordial rage and wrath– that stops her from raining down destruction upon him for spurning this never-made offer. Nonetheless, her hands clutch at his shoulders hard enough to fray the fabric of his cloak. “Don’t you understand? You’ll _die_ if they destroy this building and break your body into pieces in the process!”

“I should perhaps have died a long time ago, when Vikings attempted to raze my home,” he says with a wry grin. “They didn’t succeed, because I fortified my army with your wood, incurring your wrath. That you’ve– almost forgiven me, perhaps, enough to come here and bear me company every night– it’s enough. If I die, I’ll consider it a life well and truly lived. Because… if I let you undo the spell, I will have to leave you, someday. I’ll be a man again, and attempt to find my place in this strange world, and someday I’ll die, old and all alone. You came here instead of leaving me. I won’t leave you.”

Linden sniffles, and almost succeeds in pretending that it’s from the cold. “You are an _idiot_.”

“Undoubtedly, My Lady.” He presses a warm and quite probably disrespectful kiss to her forehead, then another, even warmer and more disrespectful one to her mouth. “But I’m your idiot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Linden: Makoto  
> Sir Nathalán: Nephrite


	21. The Firm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, I seem to start tying things together a bit. Maybe. We shall see. A few cameos of people in here. Hopefully I will have the next part up in another week or so. As usual, names are on the bottom notes.

The building that houses the offices of _Sylvane and Vale_ is typical Manhattan urban jungle– glass and steel and concrete, harsh winter sunlight reflecting off the window panes like cold fire. And yet, as Linden steps into the reception area, she’s taken aback. Soft instrumental music, something soothing with harp and woodwinds, comes piped through some unseen speakers. The walls are painted a pale sage green and there is a delicately carved stone tranquility fountain in the center of the coffee table. The carpet is plush, the colour of golden beach sand under her shoes, and the chairs are almost the same dark green as the tendrils of English ivy trailing down from a mantel adorned with fat white pillar candles in crystal holders and intricately crafted metal and stonework figurines of fairylike beings, birds with jeweled feathers, and dragonflies with stained glass wings. The windows– atypically so for an office building– are festooned with artfully draped dark blue gauze shot through with silver threads, rather like a starlit sky. The effect is both natural and fantastical all at once, and it almost gives her pause before the chirpy, polite greeting of the blonde seated behind the reception desk reminds me precisely why she had taken the afternoon off to come here. 

“Good afternoon. Can I help you?” The receptionist is blonde and well-dressed, eyeing her curiously over the top of a graceful desk adorned with a bright purple orchid plant and a placard bearing the name of “Arianna Timmons” in scrolled letters. 

“I need to speak to someone about a demolition project.” Linden rattles off the address. “Who’s in charge?”

“That would be a joint project between Mr. Sylvane and Mr. Vale. Would you like to make an appointment?” Fingers clack away on the keyboard of her computer. “I have an opening next week Thursday around 11am.”

“Absolutely not.” Linden has no intention of either waiting that long or making any type of appointment on what would be the start of lunch rush. “It will have to be sometime today.”

The mortal, Arianna, bites her lower lip, fiddles with a pretty silver necklace with a blue crystal pendant. “W-well…” She types something else into her computer. “I don’t really know when I’d have an earlier time-slot. Unless they cancel a meeting or something. And they’re not the sort to do so, you know? But I’ll be happy to take down your name– Ms…?”

“Thorne. Linden Thorne.”

Abruptly, the fingers freeze over the keys, and then the receptionist stares at her, owl-eyed, before emitting a sound that’s a cross between a squeak and a yelp. “No way! SHUT UP! _The_ Linden Thorne?! I am like your biggest fan, ever! I have every single one of your cookbooks, and my husband took me to _Juniper_ for my last birthday! I had the _Coquilles St. Jacques_ and a plum _Tarte Tatin_ that was out of this world!”

Truly, Linden did not have time for this. Not when she’d come here on a mission of utmost importance. Not when everything that mattered was so much at stake here. But not to respond would be the height of rudeness, and then again, a part of her realizes that this Arianna Timmons would be the only one who could grant her an audience with the ones who could spare Nathalán from his dire fate. She forces herself to smile politely. “ _Tarte Tatin_ is usually made with apple, so I can’t say that my version is traditional, exactly.”

In the space of about five minutes, somehow, Linden found herself deep in conversation about the technique behind making homemade macarons, and perhaps the interaction would have continued on that vein but for the shadow of a slim figure appearing from one of the inner offices. It’s a woman, with long hair sleek and dark as a sable’s pelt flowing over a neat linen skirt-suit the silvery colour of birch bark. “Arianna. Have you seen the November invoices from the— _oh_.” She pauses, and Linden can all but see her taking stock, recognition lighting upon her lovely face. “Well met, lady. I would not have expected to see one such as you, here.”

“Likewise.” Linden doesn’t know the name of the _Ælf_ -kine lady, but certainly she would have looked more at home wielding a longbow in the mountains or forests than in this city skyscraper. Her kind and the _Iele_ have a long history of kinship and accord, though– shelter for protection. “What should I call you?”

“My name is Aelene, of the house of Clarellos, and perhaps we should talk in my office.” A gracefully wry smile crosses her fine features. “I have a meeting in about ten minutes, but those never start on time, anyway.”

It’s another five minutes later that Linden has the basic history of Aelene of the house of Clarellos, who had come from the wild-woods of England a few hundred years ago with her life-mate and a few of their friends, eventually ending up here in the city. It’s another five minutes to share her own story– much alike, though perhaps without the fellowship of kin following. Linden quickly explains that the church where Nathalán resides is slated for demolition, and a furrow crosses Aelene’s brow. 

“That is a project managed by my husband and our friend, Jareth. The building has not been structurally sound for the last twenty years, and the neighbourhood had petitioned for its demolition for a long time. I’m sure we can reach some type of accord…” At that exact moment, a knock sounds on her door, followed by a smooth masculine voice. 

“Meeting, Aelene.”

“Speak of the Devil,” Aelene says wryly as she walks over, pulls the door open. “Jareth Sylvane, meet Linden Thorne of the _Iele_.”

Jareth Sylvane has the self-same look of the _Ælf_ -kine with its symmetrical features and its tall, graceful form, though his golden hair is clipped short in deference to the fashion of the times. He, much like his kinswoman, raises an eyebrow at Linden’s presence, though he saves his comment for Aelene. “I am hardly the Devil.”

“You do consort with a witch, though,” Aelene gives Jareth a smile which can only be described as teasing. “And… hmm. Perhaps that would be our best solution. And since we must have a meeting…” She turns towards Linden again, all reassurance. “We will find a way to save your friend, lady. But would you mind, terribly, if we were to make his acquaintance later, perhaps, to see about the best way to do this?”

“Of course not.” Heartened by this unexpected turn of events, Linden shakes the hand of Aelene, then Jareth. It feels almost oddly familiar, that brush of fingers, and she pulls back. “I’ll be there around midnight. And… thank you. Thank you very much.”

In a much-lightened mood, she takes her leave, blithely promising Arianna of the front desk a signed copy of her latest cookbook on her way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Linden Thorne: Makoto  
> Nathalán: Nephrite  
> Jareth Sylvane: Jadeite


	22. A Midnight Clear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This just quickly follows the last part, sort of to tie up the scene, as it were. As usual, names are at the end of the chapter.

He awakens with a groan and the ageless ache of bones reforming every night under stone turned skin. It’s an ache that he’s become accustomed to, and barely registers any more. Nathalán’s body is relatively impervious to the elements and the changes in the weather, but it’s a windy night, and he draws his cloak– miraculously intact and not threadbare, closer around his shoulders. The habit to look over to the roof hatch is harder to break, even though he knows well enough that Linden will never again come up to join him through that path. 

A twang and woosh of air– familiar, long-unheard sounds– has him swiveling, hand going towards a sword he’d not unsheathed in centuries. The soft but unmistakeable noise of an arrow being released from a longbow has not changed an iota in all these years, but before he can react, he sees Linden, winged and cruel-clawed, alighting next to where an arrow is embedded into the tile. She gives it an experimental tug, then moves to the edge of the roof. “I think it should hold well enough, considering you are an agile, light-footed lot. I wouldn’t recommend coming up a building this way to a mortal, though.”

The rope pulls taut, and Linden steps back, wings and claws receding. Her eyes find his face, blood red fading back to the soft, verdant green of a forest in spring, and much to his gratification, she smiles. “I have brought along visitors to meet you. They have promised to help.”

A blond head pops up, eyeing the surface of the roof inquisitively for a moment before the lean, lanky figure of a man vaults over the scaffolding. He’s wearing a dark cloak of some sort which unfurls in the wind, revealing a tunic clearly designed for ease of movement. A few moments later, he’s joined by two others, similarly clad, a man and woman with raven hair.

“Remarkable,” the blond stranger intones softly as he meets Nathalán’s gaze with a smile. “You’ve weathered the elements quite well then, haven’t you? They tell me your name is Sir Nathalán of Stormbrook Keep. I’m Jareth Sylvane, of the _Ælf_ -kine, and these are my friends, Aeson and Aelene.” 

The graceful couple– for they do, indeed, seem to be matched– nod in greeting. “I have heard of the likes of you, but never met one before.” Nathalán sketches a courtly bow, though he’s fairly sure the movement is out-of-date with this here and now. He affords a smile at the lady, friendly but not flirtatious. “I do recall the bards singing of the beauty of the fair folk, and see that it is indeed no exaggeration.” 

“The bards are an imaginative but flattering lot,” the lady returns merrily. She aims an arch look at her dark-haired husband. “Perhaps they have learned that sweet words can get them farther than blunt directives.” 

“I’d give you all the sweet words in the world, my lady, if I thought for a moment that you’d accept them without suspecting my motives,” her husband rejoins wryly. 

“Be that as it may, perhaps Jareth should employ sweet words of his own towards his own lady to thank her for her help.” The lady, Aelene, gives Nathalán a long, critical appraisal from all angles. “With a bit of polish and clean-up, perhaps a horse and a suit of armour, you’d make a handsome addition to Central Park, Sir Knight.”

These words mean little to Nathalán, but it’s Linden who hastens to explain. “They will move you from the roof for when this building is taken down, and polish you up a bit before putting you up as statuary in the park. Jareth knows a lady whose family has some influence– she will contact the necessary people to make the arrangements.” Her hand slips into his, strong and warm, and a faint smile crosses her beautiful face. “I suppose I’d have to get accustomed to seeing you as some valiant knight atop a galloping steed, after all. I suppose you were very dashing, back then.” _Back when he was human and mortal and had not yet crossed paths so irrevocably with her_ , she means, and a part of him knows that she almost wishes it weren’t so– that perhaps things would have been better had she left him to live out his old, perhaps very ordinary life. He barely remembers it, though, aside from vague flashes. 

“I am quite certain I was more brash than gallant,” he tells her, gazing into her eyes. Hundreds of years ago, when she’d materialized in front of him in the midst of her woods in a swirl of green leaves and gossamer, she’d been the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Now, all this time later, in her peculiar blue canvas trousers, with snowflakes melting on her eyelashes, she still is. “I certainly have more memories of getting into mischief with the other lads in the Keep than impressing any of the maidens. Probably not the best use of my time, I daresay.”

“Alas, it is a common enough affliction for the male sex. I daresay we’ve all had our share of adventure and misadventure.” The blond _Ælf_ -kine, Jareth, gives the dark-haired one a mischievous sort of smile. “Thankfully, one comes to one’s senses, eventually, when one meets and woos an Aelene, then promises, upon one’s troth, to keep out of trouble.”

“I’m sure that Aeson would beg to differ, and claim that he keeps me out of trouble as opposed to the alternative.” The _Ælf_ -kine lady shares a long look with her husband, then a fleeting, secretive smile. “I shall not argue that I am his better half, though.” 

“No one would dare say otherwise.” Aeson lets out a quiet laugh, before turning towards Linden with a kindly air. “We will have to come for him in the morn, and take him hence. It may be a week or two before you can see him again, in the park, but you have our word that he will not be harmed, Linden of the _Iele_.”

Next to him, Linden nods, her fingers curling tighter around his. “You have my thanks, _Ælf_ -kine, and for what it’s worth, my blessings.” The air stirs around them for a moment, with something thicker and charged, something more substantial than the wind. “You will tell me when I can see him again, and where to find him.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question, and Nathalán can all but hear the pulse of underlying power in the imperious tones of her voice. 

“Of course.” The blond, Jareth, pulls out one of those cunning little boxes with the flashy screens much alike Linden’s own. “I have your number. I’ll text you.” 

She nods, and then raises an eyebrow as Jareth picks up the end of the rope that he’d climbed up on, and disappears over the edge of the roof a moment later. “You guys are seriously about to climb down the side of the building again?”

“‘Tis not so different from a sequoia, from the wilds of California where we’d stayed for a decade on our way here,” Aelene says blithely. “If anything, stone is sturdier than that wood.” She smiles at Linden, then at himself. “Be good to your lady, Sir Knight. She cares for you greatly.” And with a swirl of cloak and a nimble step, she, too, disappears over the scaffolding, quickly followed by her husband. And then, it’s just the two of them again, on that roof. Usually, Linden brings some victuals with her, but today, she simply pulls a flask out of a pocket of those tight, sturdy-looking blue trousers of hers, takes a swig and hands it to him.

It’s smokey and sweeter than ale, with a good solid kick of liquor. “It’s cognac,” she tells him as he takes a sip. “The good stuff. I figure if I’m not to see you for a few days, and you’re moving onto a new home, you could use some liquid courage.”

He knows it’s her way of attempting to be brave and comforting for the both of them, and he almost wants to pull her into his embrace, hold her so tightly that nothing can pass between them– not air, and not magic. Watch the sunrise over her shoulder and let his limbs freeze into stone solidity around her so that she can’t leave. But that is the selfish sort of thought of the sort of man unworthy of her, who’d care more about imposing his own will than her comfort or freedom. So instead, he sips the fiery drink, and kisses the top of her head. Her hair smells like sunlight on mossy wood and fresh cut grass and everything lovely and vital and alive. “Liquid courage, hmm? I don’t think I ever lacked in courage, perhaps more’s the pity. But it is warm, and sweet, and I will carry that within me until I can see you again.”

Her breath escapes in a soft sigh against his neck, and together, they keep vigil on this, their final night on this particular bit of crumbling sanctuary, hearts beating in tandem until the sun rises in the distance. It’s a burst of orange light and then a chill fog which creeps in upon him, covering his eyes and all of his senses, freezing his limbs in their position. But this time, when the morning comes, the last thing he feels is the warmth of her fingers in his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nathalán: Nephrite  
> Linden: Makoto  
> Jareth: Jadeite


	23. Evening Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a few things... Warning for non-canonical character death here. Also, for the use of verses from the Bible (specifically a few lines from James 5:1 and from Psalm 37, if we must be specific). Please do not go SJW on me and flame me like I'm trying to push some religious agenda here, as the usage is not meant as a super religious thing. Also, the song lyrics quoted at the end part of this chapter are from "Bridge Over Troubled Water". As usual, names of characters will be in the end notes, though pretty sure if you've read this fic up to this point you know who's who by now.

All mortal passings are different and sad, Desirée thinks, but this particular one is sad on a whole different level.

That Douglas Townsend was dying of heart failure at the age of eighty-four, this in and of itself was not exceptionally unexpected. The man, who had been a real estate magnate in his heyday, was worth millions, and that point was made exceptionally clear by the lavishly-dressed collection of family members currently crowded into his hospital room. 

“ _I_ just don’t understand why this place doesn’t serve bottled mineral water that doesn’t come out of a nasty, filthy vending machine.” Veronica, the dying millionaire’s current wife, gripes as she taps long, manicured nails against the armrest of her chair. She doesn’t look a day over thirty-five, and her cardinal-red wool Gucci coat echoes the red bottoms of her Louboutin pumps perfectly. “I am on a strict hydration schedule that I absolutely cannot deviate from. Why, my beautician would eat me alive!”

“Even your beautician won’t be able to give you class, no matter how much you pay her,” Violet, the first wife, mutters from her spot by the window. Older, with deep lines of discontent bracketing her eyes and mouth, she shoots the dying man a venomous look. “I expected a midlife crisis out of you, Dougie. Made damn sure I was ready for it, but _two_ of them in ten years? And with _her_? She’s a year younger than our daughter! How do you think that makes Clarissa feel?”

“I don’t give a shit, mom,” Clarissa pipes up from a few feet away in a bored tone. “That’s what the very expensive therapist I spend two hours with every week exists for. I just want to get this done and over with. Hunter and I are flying out to Bali in two days. Second honeymoon. I can’t wait.”

The second wife, Valerie, largely ignores the sniping and maintains an icy silence from her own chair, wrapped up in a full-length mink coat with the languid air of a fashionable invalid who could hardly bear to breathe in hospital air. Every so often, she’d emit a tiny, dry, singular little cough. Also scattered around the room in various states of boredom are members of the third generation, ranging from toddler to teenager, almost every last one of whom is fiddling with the latest model iPhone. One girl in her teens keeps roaming the room, searching for the best spot and optimal lighting to take a selfie. Another is engaged in a viciously hissed argument with perhaps a boyfriend. There are more than a dozen people crowded into a small hospital room, and not one of them seems to truly care about the dying man outside of what they would be inheriting.

The very air of the room feels toxic, a miasmic cesspool of greed and entitlement and snobbery, and Desirée shivers and wraps both arms around herself as she edges over to Douglas Townsend’s bed, carefully stepping around a knot of bickering family members speculating over the dying man’s will. He has been on life support for the last few days, but just as she sidles up to the bed, his eyes blink open for a moment. His had been a life full of luxury and privilege, but not, in the end, a life well-lived or at all well-loved. Perhaps he realizes it, too, because as his gaze meets hers, a single tear tracks down one sunken cheek. He doesn’t say anything, though, and for once, Desirée has no words of comfort for him. In the common idiom, he’d made his bed and now lay in it, alone to his final rest. His eyes close a moment later without a single word, and it takes several minutes before the acrimonious family members to register the source of the newest sound in the room– the drone of a life support machine flat-lining. 

Suddenly, there’s a woosh of air, like a cold winter wind, lifting strands of Desirée’s golden hair and none-too-gently yanking off the baseball cap on one of the boys’ heads. Time seems to stand still in that moment, teenagers’ fingers frozen mid-movement over their phones, mouths still open mid-sentence with no words coming out, stricken silent. The machine drones on, but over it, as though through some invisible intercom, comes a voice– deep and measured and familiar, yet somehow wrathful in its very calmness. 

_“For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.”_

No one speaks; perhaps they’d been rendered mute, or perhaps they are, justly, terrified. All three of the dead man’s former wives share panic-stricken glances at each other, but no one moves. 

_“Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.”_

There are far too many people in the room; more than once, in the last few hours, harried-looking doctors and nurses had tried, in vain, to tell the family members that it was against hospital policy to crowd thusly in there, only to be told in very disagreeable tones that “our family owns half this building”. There should be no way for Kafziel to walk in, blindingly white wings unfurled, brandishing a sword aglow with fiery light, without crashing into people everywhere. And yet somehow he does, his face terrible and beautiful as he makes a beeline for her, mouth enunciating the words that echo about the cramped hospital room as though it had cathedral ceilings. His eyes gentle, though, once he reaches her, and the wings and sword blink out of view as he holds out his hand. Desirée lays her palm over his, and lets him lead her out, and it is only after she crosses the threshold that slowly, gingerly, the family members of Douglas Townsend seem to come back to life, pale and subdued now in a shadow of their former pretentious selves. With shaking hands, one of the former wives reaches for the call button to summon the medical team.

Kafziel walks quickly, up and down the brightly-lit corridors, though not so quickly that Desirée can’t keep up. “Where are we going?” 

“Away from here for a bit.” He doesn’t quite touch the main door, but it springs open, and then they’re out in the starlit night. It’s wintertime and the wind lifts her hair, and by all rights, she should feel cold, but standing at Kafziel’s side, the chill is nothing but a breeze. “Death can be a mercy for some, a terror for others. And sometimes, it’s nothing but a meaningless end to a meaningless life.” His somber gray eyes meet Desirée’s blue ones. “Do not let them sadden you, little one.”

“It’s just that… he could have had such a wonderful life. He wanted for nothing. All of them wanted for nothing,” Desirée sighs as they made their way down the sidewalk. At this late hour, though there are still people, it is not at all crowded. No one makes any eye contact as he leads her down the street. “Ultimately, all he might have accomplished in life is in there being divided up like a side of pork at the hands of an army of merciless butchers all out to get the fattiest piece. Do you think he saw this as his end?”

“I don’t think that he wanted for nothing,” Kafziel says reflectively. “He certainly had money, and power, and perhaps even respect at times. But love passed him by– both the giving and the receiving. Ultimately, he died a poor man in what ways truly matter.”

His hand is warm and sure against her lower back, and he gently ushers her down the stairs of the nearest subway station. At this hour, it isn’t too packed, and the car they get in has enough room in it that there are actually open seats. Neither of them take one, though, and a heavyset woman trundles into the one closest to where Kafziel is standing. 

“She works at a very popular pizza parlour.” Kafziel follows Desirée’s gaze towards the woman, whom, upon closer inspection, seems to have a smudge of flour on one cheek. and wears sensible non-slip shoes. “She’s been there for the last twenty years. Her husband works the first shift at a factory. She takes the kids– they have three– to school in the morning before heading to work, and he picks them up when he gets back. It’s not an easy life, but they’re happy with it.”

The train rolls from one station to the next, and in the quiet, soothing tones of someone telling a cherished loved one a bedtime story, Kafziel gives her bits and pieces about the people that come on and disembark. The teenaged boy, all bravado under his Yankees beanie and headphones, was taking classes at the local college, studying to be an engineer. He was meeting up with a few friends that night, and there was a girl that he liked who might be there. The grizzled old man reading the newspaper owned a corner store, and the highlight of his week was seeing his grandchildren at church every Sunday, after which they’d go have lunch at a diner and play checkers. 

It’s fascinating and strangely comforting, all these miniscule slices of eclectic mortal life, and as the train car goes on, Desirée gets caught up in the fun of it, and makes her own speculations about the people. She’s usually wrong, but Kafziel simply gives her a faint smile and tells her the truth about them. 

“She’s a teacher, or a social worker– some profession focused on helping people find their best selves. Happy in love. Not a New Yorker born and raised, but she’s come to love this place as her home. No children yet, but she’d love to have them someday, have a cozy home with a daughter and perhaps a cat.” With almost a giggle, Desirée rattles off her imagined version of the life story of the latest passenger– a trim blonde in a pink peacoat with a pretty, friendly face. But as soon as she’s done, she catches Kafziel’s eye, and he’s looking at her rather speculatively.

“You’re right about everything with her,” he says, after a moment of almost-awkward silence. “Her name is Angela Schein– though, Angela King, now. She’s actually the wife of one of the doctors at the hospital. One of the intake physicians at the ER, whom you like fairly well.”

Desirée’s startled gaze meets his. She knows instinctually which doctor Kafziel is referring to– the young, dark-haired one with the kind blue eyes– and for that, she gives the blonde woman another look. If kindness and goodness were visible, she’d all but radiate it like a glowing beacon. It’s almost a breath of fresh air in spirit, clearing away the stench of materialism and selfishness from Douglas Townsend’s deathbed, and she wonders for a moment if Kafziel knew that Angela would be on this train at this hour. She wouldn’t put it past him. 

“So you see, do not despair.” Kafziel’s voice is softer than ever, a far cry from the ringing, unearthly wrath he’d unleashed upon the ears of the Townsend clan. “There is good left in the world, greater and stronger ever than the evil. Do not let the unworthy ones dishearten you.” His hand draws her just a little closer, and between that and the steady rhythm of the train, she finds her comfort. 

An indiscernible amount of stops later, they disembark with the last passengers at the final stop, walk at a leisurely pace through the subway station. They pause in front of a ragged dirty-blond urchin of a young man, strumming a guitar and singing in a surprisingly sweet and tuneful tenor. 

_“Sail on silver girl_  
Sail on by  
Your time has come to shine  
All your dreams are on their way  
See how they shine  
Oh, if you need a friend  
I’m sailing right behind  
Like a bridge over troubled water  
I will ease your mind  
Like a bridge over troubled water  
I will ease your mind…” 

The last time she’d heard someone playing music in front of her had been in a ballroom, at a society event where she’d danced with several eligible young men. It had been before her marriage to Antoine, and waltzing about in a pretty gown had been exciting for a young girl full on the lease of life. The present is nowhere near as elegant, and yet, with Kafziel’s hand clasping hers, it feels warmer and more intimate, the words sung seeming just for her. It’s neither the time nor place to stand up on tiptoe and twirl, and Desirée does neither. But she knows, without him saying so, that he’d understand if she did. He says nothing, but drops a crisp hundred-dollar bill in the young man’s battered guitar case, not to be noticed until later, and they walk away as silently as they had approached.

When they make it above-ground, it is to the majestic sight of the Brooklyn Bridge, a brilliantly-lit focal point at the forefront of the Manhattan skyline against a backdrop of ink-black night. There’s a brisk breeze coming up from the water and Kafziel draws her close, wrapping both arms around her shoulders. “Hold on to me,” he whispers into the crown of her hair, and she clenches her fingers around the soft material of his shirt as his feet leave the pavement with a rush of wind. Desirée untucks her face from his shoulder a few moments to see that they’re at the very top of the bridge tower. Underneath them, both pedestrian and motor traffic cross the bridge in both directions, a terrifying height below. The water below is dark and undoubtedly cold, and the spot they’re standing must be precarious at best.

And yet, she has never felt safer. Perhaps that, too, had been a plan on Kafziel’s part. The song of the busker, the unspoken message in the strength of the arms holding her. Desirée isn’t facing him, but she hopes that he can see her smile, nonetheless. 

In the morning, perhaps, there will be another death at Bellevue, bringing with it more sorrow and pain, or perhaps relief and rest. It would be another day. 

She would think, though, of the beauty of another sunrise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Desirée: Minako  
> Kafziel: Kunzite  
> Angela: Usagi  
> Antoine: Ace/Adonis


	24. Blue Melody

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is rated PG13 for off-screen sexytimes. Possibly a bit of foreshadowing, possibly a bit of background. As usual, names will be in the bottom notes.

The building is standard industrial concrete, the sort which could become anything and everything from a distribution warehouse to a dance studio, and is all but empty inside when Zhen unlocks the door.

“My latest acquisition,” he tells her with a wry smile. “It used to house a self-storage company until they got into some trouble with the law. Big sting, lots of contraband of the weapons and drugs variety.” A whimsical smile crosses his mouth. “I bought it because it was cheap, but also because the walls are blue.”

It’s just the sort of fanciful thing he’d say, green-gold eyes gazing deeply into her blue ones as his smile grows, and it’s hard not to be charmed, even though she knows quite well that the charisma is part of his birthright. But she’s never been the sort to give in so easily, and so she raises an eyebrow instead of smiling. “Did you have any particular plan for this building? It could become anything, really. I’m sure Jareth would have a few notions of what to do with it if you asked.”

“He’d probably suggest turning it into something horrifying, like a Target with a Starbucks built inside,” Zhen affects an exaggeratedly scandalized expression. “Perhaps he’d come up with something even _more_ soulless and appalling. He’s a terrifyingly creative fellow.”

Raina can’t quite hold back a giggle at the very idea of Jareth, with his discerning _Ælf_ -kine sensibilities, partaking in anything so plebeian as the design and construction of a Target of all places. “Well. I’m quite sure it’d be a profitable endeavour if you did decide upon that.”

“Undoubtedly, but the headaches wouldn’t be worth it. Mortals are _so_ aggravatingly rude in those types of shops. Especially middle-aged women with coupons and caterwauling offspring.” He blinks his eyes slowly, almost drowsily, the way a fox might upon catching sight of a hare it didn’t want to spook, then throws up both hands, palms outwards. And then, right in front of her eyes, the room begins to fill, furnishings and decor appearing all around them as though conjured under the wand of a stage magician. And yet… Raina takes a half-step back, right into a padded high-top stool the likes of which wouldn’t be out of place at any dim, intimate whiskey bar. She reaches out and feels smooth-worn wood underneath her fingers, and then in her view, a glistening row of bottles appear. Some bluesy melody plays in the background, a smokey rasp of a torch singer’s voice against syncopated drumbeats and the sultry wail of a saxophone. It’s so realistic, so _tangible_ to all the senses that she would never have thought it an illusion had she not just walked into an empty building a few minutes ago.

“Impressive,” she breathes, running her fingers over the wood of the bar. Almost immediately, a squat tumbler of amber-hued single-malt Scotch on the rocks appears in front of her, the icy condensation cold and wet against her fingertips, the rich yet astringent smell of the alcohol pungent on the air. She takes a cautious, tiny sip– it even tastes like expensive liquor– and yet there’s something subtly lacking, as though her body doesn’t recognize it as alcohol consumption and cue in the metabolic process of converting the ethanol molecules into acetaldehyde. For all it tastes and looks and smells like Scotch, it has none of the chemical or physiological properties. An illusion, almost flawless, but not quite.

“I don’t drink, not anymore,” Zhen gives her a crooked, self-deprecating grin. “The last time I did, I ended up on a misadventure which ended up with me caught in the business end of an abandoned hunter’s trap in the mountains for a good six months. I was starving and almost feral by the end of that ordeal, by the time I’d finally gotten free. Your colleague actually found me in his backyard. Fed me a cold plate of leftovers. He was perhaps three or four years old, then.”

Raina pauses, and then, in her usual quick fashion, she connects the dots. “I wondered why you acted like you were running into an old friend at Adam’s wedding.” She also knew the bare-bones story about Adam King’s story– a rough childhood with poor, dysfunctional biological parents which could have ended up as any number of tragic statistics, an alcohol-induced car accident which he miraculously survived, then an auspicious placement with an adoptive family that turned his life around and brought him to the place he was today. _‘It was as though I had a guardian angel who brought me out of that car wreck and into a new world,’_ Adam had said to her before. Smiling, she steps away from the hyper-realistic bar and up to Zhen, reaches up with her cool fingers and touches his warm cheek. “You went to bless his marriage. That’s why you started seeing me. So you’d have a reason to be there.”

Slowly, he nods, and with a slow flicker like a set of lights blinking out, the whiskey bar disappears, accoutrement by accoutrement, until it’s just the two of them standing together in an empty warehouse again. Oddly enough, though, the bluesy music continues to play, softer and sweeter now, as though coming from the next room. He dips his head, covers her fingers with his own even as he brushes his lips over her forehead. “I did, I suppose, have ulterior motives when I met you. Not bad ones, but I didn’t just meet you for you. Until… there you were.” His eyes meet hers over the curve of a gentle, ironic smile. “I was captivated, you know. And then, immediately, sad. People live such short, short lives. I knew, if I got close to you, I’d be devastated if you left me. And yet I couldn’t resist. Do you forgive me?”

Raina thinks of her mother, who’d been wooed by a mortal man and married him hundreds of years ago. Her father had been a portrait painter for a Renaissance court, and enjoyed fame and privilege from his talent and the great wealth that his fae wife had brought with her as a dowry. But three times he’d broken his word to her mother, and so she’d left him, taking Raina with her to be raised in the Old Way. Her father had died penniless and broken-hearted, abandoning his prosperous post in court for painting water-scapes, turbulent, murky things as he’d gone from creek to lake to sea, bewailing his fortune and begging forgiveness from a wife who would never return.

“Will you promise never to lie to me, or break your word?” She feels as though she’s standing on a precipice, gazing into the unknown depths. She barely remembers what her father looked like, but she’d inherited his dark hair. She imagines that he must have been handsome, perhaps almost as charming as Zhen, agreeing readily to that which her mother had asked of him in a haze of enchantment.

He kisses her forehead again, then dips his head to kiss her mouth, lips warm and dry against her cool, damp ones. “I won’t make any promises,” his mouth traces the words against hers, feather-light. “I won’t make any promises that I might ultimately break, be it through fate or will.” The cavernous room changes again, filling with rows of well-worn pews. The music changes to something more solemn and grand, pipe-organ rather than saxophone, and the flickering light and faint scent of candles fills the air, though lacking something of the heat. It’s just the sort of back-drop, the appropriate setting, where a man might make his vows. The candlelight forms a halo around the old-gold curls of his hair, and he takes her hand, lays a kiss over the back of each. “I will make you one promise, and one promise only. And that will be to love you for as long as we both shall live.” 

The room is all skillful illusion and the man is all consummate charm, and yet, Raina finds it in herself to believe him. She slides her fingers through the tousled silk of his hair, then skims them over the nape of his neck, reveling a bit at his involuntary shiver as his lips home in on hers. “We may both live for a long time yet.” The words are muffled against his mouth, his skin, and his response is almost lost against her own.

“I stand by my promise.” 

At some point, later, the room shifts again, transforming into what almost looks like a luxurious suite of rooms out of a mansion somewhere. Zhen lifts her off her feet, depositing her onto soft sheets that feel precisely like silk underneath her fingertips. She finds herself laughing, even as he kisses all the skin he can reach, clever fingers tugging at fabric to expose more. “I should have figured you’d bring me here to make love.” 

He doesn’t say anything in response to that. But the bluesy melody starts playing again in the background, a sultry-hot caress of notes in the air with the weight of fingers on bare skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zhen: Zoisite  
> Raina: Ami  
> Jareth: Jadeite  
> Adam: Mamoru/Endymion


	25. Imbolc

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Apsaraqueen for all her help as usual. This chapter is dedicated to her. Rated PG13 though nothing graphic. As always, names are in the bottom notes.

_FINALLY leaving for home now, how about you?_

_I suppose you wouldn’t want any company on the trip back? You HAVE been burning the midnight oil, hmm?_

_Oh, very literally, yes. But I’ll see you at the bridge in a bit!_

The texts had started earlier that day, when she had first arrived at her Grandfather’s. Jareth had been in Manhattan, finalizing the project that he’d been working on, moving a _Stone-Hewn_ from atop a crumbling church slated for demolition. He’d asked for her help– her lineage was an old and established one in the city– and it had been in her grandfather’s name that a new and quite-elegant-looking statue of a knight on a rearing steed had been donated to Central Park and installed in a shady corner. The _Iele_ , Linden Thorne, had thanked him profusely, then kept vigil after he’d left, awaiting the moment her knight would awaken in his new home. Undoubtedly, she was just as eager to see her beloved as he was to see his.

That thought put a grin that he was quite certain was both obvious and wry on his face. 

Ember walks briskly but gracefully, dark coat and dark skirts and dark hair, but today, perhaps in honour of the Imbolc celebration, there is a silk scarf tied at a jaunty angle on her neck, cardinal-red with a milk-white fringe. She looks up and smiles when she catches sight of him, and reaches out a slim hand, which he uses to pull her close. 

The wind swirls her midnight hair around the both of them, and he pulls away after a too-brief moment of breathing in the scent of snowfall and scrying smoke and sandalwood. “You smell good.”

She raises an eyebrow at that, but then laughs softly even as her fingers twine with his. “I’ve spent the vast majority of this evening making candles for Imbolc. Lots of essential oils and herbs involved in the process, you know?”

She tells him of the traditional rites– the weaving of crosses from the rushes, the making and lighting of spell candles, the feast to honour the goddess Brighid and entreat the gods for a mild spring. The bridge is not crowded at this late hour, and so they take their time crossing it, all the bright lights of Manhattan glistening in the background against an inky sky. 

“I love crossing the bridge at this hour, when it’s not full of people rushing from one place to another,” Ember pauses and glances back at the city skyline. “It’s sometimes a bit trying to be around a bunch of people who are all in a hurry and have a great deal on their minds.”

Jareth can imagine that well enough; anyone with even a touch of the empath or the clairvoyant would likely find crowds tiresome, and his wise woman has more than her share of those gifts. But neither would she expect pity– Ember was nothing if not conscientious, and certainly ascribed to the notion that with great power came great responsibility. But he would see her smile again, if he could arrange it. “I will admit, one of my first times crossing the bridge was at the hour of quarter-of-four in the morning, alongside my kin. It was utterly deserted. And I may have climbed to the very top, ‘for the hell of it’, as they say.” At the look she shoots him, he grins. “’Tis not so different from climbing a tree. If anything, because of the building materials and the cables, it’s actually sturdier.”

Much to his gratification, this declaration does elicit a faint giggle out of her. “And what did your friends have to say about that, if I may be so bold as to ask?” She’d met Aeson and Aelene perhaps two weeks ago, when they’d planned out the moving of the _Stone-Hewn_ over dinner and drinks, and though he’d endured a bit of gentle teasing from both of them, Jareth was quite certain that his friends had liked her well enough. 

He affects a preternaturally solemn expression. “Well, certainly, Aelene scolded me for sporting around excessively. And I’m quite sure I would have taken her more seriously if it weren’t for the fact that she herself has been known to cross town by rooftops rather than streets if the traffic is extra heavy. To be fair, we’ve all been guilty. Especially during rush-hour.”

The giggle becomes a full-on laugh. “Show-off.” She swats him lightly on the arm, but for all that, he’s pleased to see the merriment twinkling in her violet eyes. “I can’t judge, though. Grandfather amused himself last week by putting a faint levitation charm on his neighbour’s welcome mat. Not enough of one to cause any true alarm, but just enough to give the fellow the sensation of taking a step up for a few seconds even when he remained on level ground. That man’s got two months before April Fool’s Day and I don’t even want to contemplate what types of shenanigans he may get up to then.”

It’s a few minutes to midnight by the time they reach Jane’s Carousel on the other side of the bridge, and with a delightfully mischievous smile, Ember gives his hand a tug towards the unlit structure. “Come on!” A snap of her fingers and it comes to life, lights winking on and horses spinning slowly in a circle. She doesn’t spell on the music, though, likely in consideration of anyone who might be sleeping in hearing range. 

Her skirts are slightly too long to suit sitting astride on even a carousel horse, but Ember perches gracefully enough on the back of a dappled grey like a Regency-era lady on side-saddle. Half-enchanted, half-amused, he stands at her side as the carousel makes its circuit, one hand steady at the small of her back. She has one hand wrapped around the pole attached to the horse, but with an airy wave of the other, the air fills with rainbowy soap bubbles and glittery red firework sparks. Her eyes meet his as the carousel slows and gradually comes to a stop, and he thinks for a moment he can see a hint of the sweet, intrepid little girl she might have been, sometime in the distant past, before she’d understood the portent of her gifts. 

“I have never actually ridden this carousel before,” she says as she steps off the colourful structure, its lights fading behind the two of them. “I was grown up by the time it was built, of course. But life’s hardly worth living if one can’t trade off several hours of duty for a few moments of frivolity once in a great while, hmm?” A wry smile crosses her lovely lips. “I daresay I haven’t, perhaps, engaged in as much merry-making as my grandfather is wont to do nowadays. But every so often…”

He can’t quite resist the temptation to kiss her mouth, curved as it is in a smile, but keeps it gentle and brief. She glances at him through a fringe of sooty eyelashes as they make their way down the street. “I think I remember this street– your friend Angela brought me to your place after I met her.”

“So she did,” Jareth nods. “She invited the both of you up for wine and sympathy after the ordeal of that evening. I suppose I could repeat that invitation.”

She had not been there since that day Angela had brought her– indeed, it had always seemed more appropriate to see her safely home after meeting with her than bringing her to his place. But when he unlocks the doors, she looks around with avid interest. His loft is rather less luxurious than hers, but airy and spacious, with vaulted ceilings and buffed wooden floors. 

“It’s interesting how one can get a fairly true idea of another’s nature by visiting their home.” Ember accepts a glass of wine from him and takes a slow sip even as she makes herself comfortable. “Pale walls and plentiful greenery, windows that let in natural light. You display your bows and knives within easy reach, but elegantly so, not in a threatening way.” There is an intricately cast Medieval diptych in bronze on one wall– love and war. On another is a Salish wall hanging. Over the mantel is a striking black-and-white photograph of the Manhattan skyline. “I can see where you’ve been, through the art you’ve collected. Perhaps even a bit of friends you might have made along the way.” Setting down her empty glass, she stands, pulling something out of her pocket, and beckons him to follow as she walks towards the mantel.

“It’s a Brighid’s cross and a candle for your hearth, such as it is,” Ember ties on the little rush-woven amulet to a nail. The candle is pale beeswax flecked with the mossy green of herbs, and when she lights it, the scent is redolent with something sweet and slightly herbacious. “Basil and blackberry for love and protection. Blessed be, Jareth Sylvane.” Reaching up, she lays her hands gently on his face, pulls him down for a kiss. 

Ember the witch, with her tarot cards and her rune stones. Ember the warrior, running to Angela’s aid against an armed mugger, dashing across Central Park to find a child before she drowned. Ember the _woman_ – thoughtful, quietly strong-willed and surprisingly sweet at the oddest moments, multi-faceted and fascinating and so beautiful sometimes that his heart ached with it. “I have all the love and protection I need wherever and whenever I am with you,” he tells her softly as he draws back far enough to look into her eyes, blue to violet. Those words are not ones that his kind ever bandy about lightly, but somehow, saying them to her is as easy as breathing. 

Her expression is soft as this late, quiet hour and solemn as his unspoken vow. The _Ælf_ -kine lack a bit of humanity’s curiosity and evanescent interest in others, and to profess love for another is not only a statement of regard but of intent and eternal fidelity. She knows it, too, and stands back just far enough to take his hands in hers. Her fingers are warm and the crackle of power vibrates against his skin like static electricity, and though she whispers them, he hears every word of her promise in return in the incantation as the candle burns to its base in a flickering ball of golden light.

_“By candleflame’s light I vow to thee–_  
Faithful as the tides of the moonlit sea,  
The shelter of my living heart is thine,  
May all thy joys and sorrows be as mine.” 

She lets her breath escape with that last word on a soft exhale, then smiles tremulously up at him. “ _An’ as I will it, so mote it be_.” The spell undoubtedly carries great power, but it doesn’t feel heavy or portentous at all, and simply fills the air with a comforting warmth. He can’t resist drawing her close again, but now when she presses her lips to his, there’s a frission of heat and sweetness stronger and far more profound. He’d certainly been aware of her beauty before– the graceful balance of her features, the low harmony of her voice, but it’s a different, more primal awareness now, as though his very nerves and veins tingle with the way the scent of her skin warms the closer her holds her, the way her lips taste like cabernet sauvignon and chamomile tea. Her fingers trace a pattern– probably a rune of protection, knowing his love’s careful heart, down his nape, then slide down to his back to brush against bare skin underneath the hem of his sweater. His breath catches even as he traces the shape of her jaw, the length of her neck with his lips. Her head tilts back on a moan, and those beautiful eyes, fiery-dark now as the edge of twilight, meet his. 

“Jareth, please tell me you have a bed in here somewhere.”

He does, and he seldom makes use of it, but now he lifts her up in his arms, ascends the shallow steps which lead upstairs. Even with his fleet-footedness, the trek up is slow, as they stop every few steps to kiss, to touch warm skin with fingers that quiver with wonder. He lands on his back on the white sheets and tugs her down over him, neither of them quite so graceful now, and fills his hands with fragrant skeins of her raven hair even as her own fingers fiddle with the fastenings of his clothes. 

It’s much later that he watches the sky lighten from black to indigo just as the sun is about to rise. Next to him, Ember sleeps soundly, dark hair spilled over white shoulders. Through the course of the night, she’d shifted to take over more than half the bed, and it’s certainly a different experience resting with another body lying half-sprawled over one’s own, warm and supple with breaths that tickled his skin. 

And yet, those few half-wakeful, half-dreaming hours, feeling her heartbeat soft and steady against his own flesh, lulled by the scent of her hair and the faint sounds of her breathing, were the greatest rest he’d ever known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jareth: Jadeite  
> Ember: Rei  
> Linden: Makoto  
> Angela: Usagi


	26. A Quiet Street Anywhere In The City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand pardons for not posting this sooner-- I was quite, quite busy working on my fic for this year's senshi/shitennou reverse mini-bang. It looks to be an epic year!!
> 
> This chapter's title actually needs to be credited to Apsara aka BAMF aka my official fic consultant. 
> 
> Also, as usual, names are on the bottom notes.

The place they’d gone to had been reasonably priced and boasted a decent bottle selection. It was not the first time that Ember had seen Angela Schein since The Incident, but these girls’ nights out, such as they were, did not happen with great frequency either. Angela, married now and all but glowing with newlywed bliss, had been just as incandescently kind and pure-souled as ever, and they’d whiled away a happy enough hour over some small plates and small talk and wine– an Argentinian Malbec for her, a Napa Valley Rosé for the blonde. Ember had then conscientiously seen Angela safely to her home, remembering the circumstances of their first meeting, before heading in the direction of Brooklyn herself.

Nothing is out of the ordinary until she is all but three blocks away from her building, but when it comes, the darkness rose with the speed and force of an eruption. She takes off at a run perhaps a split-second before the soft, ominous sounds of a scuffle even reached her ears.

_Remember, little Firebird, bad things can happen to people on a quiet street anywhere in this city_. It had been a lesson imparted upon her by her grandfather many decades ago, well before 9-11, or the Central Park Jogger case, or even the Son of Sam attacks. It had been cold comfort in the aftermath of some of the tragedies that she’d seen, and even now, though she knows, realistically, that there is no way to cheat fate, the black-fly buzz of impending catastrophe still fills her with knee-jerk anger and sorrow that will never be easy to shake. 

She hears a muffled argument in gutter Spanish– no less furious for all it’s quiet– before she even turns the corner, and then the unmistakable sound of a pistol being cocked, and her heart makes an uncomfortable leap to her throat. Nothing she has on her is powerful enough to stop death in its tracks.

But then, as though out of nowhere, not one but three police vehicles barrel down the street, flashing lights and blaring sirens as they head directly towards where the argument started off. Two cruisers, followed by a burly SUV from the K-9 unit, converge onto the alley, and perhaps in fear or perhaps in a pragmatic desire for survival, two dark-clad figures run off from the scene before any shots can be fired. 

She cautiously makes her way down the street, towards the cluster of police vehicles, and much to her surprise, the door of the K-9 vehicle opens, something sleek and sharp-muzzled jumping out. But where she might have expected a brawny Malinois or German Shepherd on a leash, she gets the immediate impression of something smaller but wilder– vulpine, before it morphs right in front of her eyes into a man, sleekly handsome with long, curling hair the dusky blonde of old gold. Ember is sure her shock is registered on her face, but the man smiles, peridot-green eyes lighting up in friendly recognition. “Well met at long last, milady.” Silent and fleet, he crosses the street in a blink, and takes her hand in both of his, laying a kiss on the knuckles in a gesture that should have by all rights been sleazy rather than gracious. “I’m Zhen. A friend of Jareth’s, if you will.”

“Oh.” Ember relaxes, looking up into the man’s stunning face. All fox spirits, regardless of gender or clan or alignment, are known for their beauty, and this one is no exception. She knows of him– a finance wizard, as befits his kin’s affinity for acquisition and illusion– but had she not known his chosen vocation, she would have expected a visage such as his to grace a Milan runway. “Well. Thanks for the…” She gestures vaguely at the alley where the cluster of police cars had been parked, only to realize, belatedly, that they’d disappeared without a trace. Her eyes narrow– even distracted, she should have noticed them vanishing into thin air.

His smile morphs into a grin full of fun and mischief. “I could be a _hell_ of a stage magician, don’t you think? Like Harry Houdini and David Copperfield and Criss Angel all rolled into one but better-looking.” The statement incites a scoff and an eye-roll, as it is meant to, and he lets go of her hand, and a bit of the animal hypnotism lets off with the release of skin on skin contact. 

“What were you doing here?” It’s the question that she finally settles on asking first. It is perhaps just a coincidence that they were both present when the shooting would have gone down. Or perhaps not. His aura is colourful and chaotic like an abstract pop art on a spiritual canvas, but she senses no malevolence. 

“My lovely one is working late tonight, leaving me to my own devices, so I was visiting one of my favourite places, earlier.” He names a quaint little 24-hour cafe within walking distance that had been opened only six months ago but was already quite popular with the locals for their buttery scones and their exquisitely smooth espresso. “And then I decided to take a walk. And I happened upon that situation just at the same time as you, so I think I deserve another scone. Or six. You should come. My treat.”

He reaches for her hand again, gives it a tug, and now more aware of it, she feels the whisper of suggestion like the glide of cashmere against her skin, warm and with just the slightest bit of friction. More to make a better acquaintance of this adroit creature than for the promise of treats, she lets herself be guided towards the cafe. Within short order, they’re seated at one of the tiny round tables, with a plate of scones glossy with butter and flecked with orange zest in front of them next to a traditional duo of strawberry preserves and clotted cream. Zhen buys himself an espresso but Ember opts for jasmine green tea. It’s good-quality and gently fragrant, not steeped too long or hot. Zhen helps himself to a scone, then another, with an almost-childlike enthusiasm, and she leaves him to it. An illusion the scope of which he’d conjured takes more than a little skill, a little energy. 

Three scones in, he takes a luxuriant sip of espresso and wipes his lips with a napkin. “Ah. So much deliciousness. I do hate being hungry, don’t you?” Not waiting in particular for her to respond, he leans back in his chair, eyes sharp and alert. “I suppose you’ll want to know what I’m doing here, in a more grand scheme of things than just Brooklyn at half-past ten at night.”

“I can figure that out on my own, but it wouldn’t be polite to pry without your knowledge and consent,” Ember answers, glancing at his hands for a moment before looking back up into his face. “I don’t really like to– intrude, if you will– unless I have to, or I am invited.”

“I can see why Jareth adores you so,” Zhen beams with the brilliance of a high-powered halogen lamp. “But in answer to your question, I followed a man here. He did me a good turn once, and I have guarded him, since. We might be a mischievous and occasionally temperamental lot, but we’re loyal to those who come to our aid. And he did just get married– to a lovely young lady. I blessed them with long life and prosperity, of course. As one does.”

_“So you’re here to inquire about a wedding.”_

_“She’s like a sister to me.”_

Another beautiful, long-lived man. Another inquiry about a wedding over a cup of tea. It’s like a puzzle piece which has fallen into place, and she can see the implications like spider-silk outlined in dew, reaching elusively out in all directions. The thoughts of what this portends for the future, though, fills her with trepidation. _Where there is great good, there will always be great evil to challenge it. Despair follows triumph like night follows day…_

Zhen must sense something of her distress, because he reaches over, pours her another cup of tea. His hypnotic eyes meet hers over the curling steam. “They’re safe, you know.” He does not clarify whether he is talking about the mortal couple, Adam and Angela, or the rest of the world as they know it, and the oblivious people who inhabit it. “Why, we would never have met, otherwise. And you seem _almost_ as fabulous a personage as me, so wouldn’t that be a pity?”

The remark is flippant and designed to make her chuckle, and works as it is intended to do. But it also reminds Ember of the last part of that fateful Tarot card reading she’d done for Jareth, only a few months ago– had it been less than a mere year that she’d known him?– and the last few cards he’d pulled. The King and Queen of Wands, the High Priestess and the Magician. She’d known, in some sense, that he’d become important to her, but not the depth and scope of it. In a mere change of seasons, she’d entrusted more of herself and her heart into another’s hands for safekeeping than she ever had in several centuries of living. She glances again at the man across from the table, with his clever hands and mesmerizing gaze. His illusions and charms. Jareth’s agility and bow, the support of his kin. The primordial nature magic of the _Iele_ and the inhuman strength of the _Stone-Hewn_. There were bound to be others she’d yet to meet. It would be the most powerful, diverse convergence of immortals that she– and perhaps they, too– had ever seen. 

She lets out a breath in a long, shaky exhale and picks up her tea. Life and fate came with no guarantees, but she could always hope. And whatever battles may come, she’d never have to face alone, again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ember: Rei  
> Angela: Usagi  
> Zhen: Zoisite  
> Jareth: Jadeite


	27. After Last Call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey look! At least, after my lack of updates, you guys can have two chapters instead of just one! Slight warnings for monster/horror movie type scares. Names of the characters are at the bottom as always. The monster/demon in this chapter is a Kishi, which is a cannibalistic part-humanoid part-hyena demon from Angolan folklore, which charms women with its handsome human face before killing and eating them with its monstrous hyena face, which is hidden in the back of its head.

The club is packed, steamy with heated bodies, redolent with the sultry scent of sweat and top shelf vodka and expensive makeup. The DJ is on fire, the VIP section boasts several supermodels, fawn-limbed and glassy-eyed, along with a few professional athletes rowdy after several beers, and on all three levels, the bartenders are running through bottle after bottle amidst the endless line of partiers. 

The man is impeccably dressed in a pin-striped blazer and a blood-red silk shirt, a felt fedora perched jauntily on the top of his tawny hair. He stays on the outskirts of the main group writhing on the dance floor, amber eyes watchful as they slide over the sinuous ripple of flesh. There’s a bachelorette party on the main floor, easily recognizable by the matching candy-pink sashes. He pauses over them– quite tipsy, to a one, and delectable in the best way– but large groups present their difficulties. 

Almost fatefully, a voice sounds behind him, and it’s the bartender, a cute, buxom girl with curly red hair and a great smile. “What’re you having?” 

The man smiles, revealing brilliantly white teeth. “Oh, well, hello. And could I trouble you for a Brandy Alexander, my sweet?”

The red-haired bartender lets out a giggle. “Coming right up. Y’know, I would have pegged you as a Scotch rocks type of guy. Not someone who’d be into sweet drinks.”

“Oh,” The man leans forward, eyes fixed hypnotically upon hers. “But I have– very much– a sweet tooth that can’t be denied.”

The bartender, Molly, gives him his Brandy Alexander a few moments later, and though she’s slammed, she manages to check up on him with a flattering frequency, and he learns bits and pieces about her over the din of music and cheers and glasses clinking and high heels on hard floors. She’d moved into a new place recently after her previous roommate had gotten married, and now lived with a good friend who worked for Verizon, and they kept opposite schedules. The man’s a good listener, who nods with very flattering interest at all the appropriate moments, and leaves a crisp hundred-dollar-bill on the bar after finishing his solo drink. Even for an anticipatedly busy and profitable night, it’s an eye-catching tip, and so Molly has nothing but positive feelings towards the man, who never did leave his name, unfortunately.

She’s exhausted but wired by half-past four in the morning as she’s walking out of the main doors of the club, and the streets are quiet at this hour as she makes the quick trek towards the subway station. When a shadowy figure steps into her path, she yelps– but the alarm quickly morphs into a smile. “Oh, it’s you. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

The man, who’d been leaning against the wall, takes off his hat in a gesture almost courtly. “Oh, do not be alarmed, my sweet.” His hair, uncovered, is a thick and voluminous mane, and under the brilliance of the street lights, she sees faint freckles at his cheekbones and temples, an almost unearthly reddish glow to his eyes. “I would never let someone else harm you.”

Something about the way he says it is a bit unnerving, and Molly takes an instinctive step back, the finely-honed wariness of one who worked late nights in the big city kicking in. “Well, good night. And…. _AHHHHHHHHHH!!!_ ”

It’s a blur of motion and terror– she has no more than a moment to glimpse another face– a cruel, bestial one red-eyed with hunger and terrifying with bared fangs, lunging straight toward her, and then she’s knocked sprawling, knees and elbows jarring as they hit the pavement, and there’s suddenly someone– _something_ – standing between her and the predator’s teeth, a woosh of fire and silver light. She hears the snap of jaws and the sickening, shredding noise of teeth sinking in, tearing, but she’s too terrified to look up. _This is how my life ends. Mauled on the sidewalk. Oh, God, I’m too young to die…_

“ _The way of the Lord is a stronghold to the blameless, but destruction to evildoers_.“ A new voice, deep and yet wrathful, breaks through her terror, and she hears the clash of something metallic striking with great enough force that the whole sidewalk shudders, then the high, eerie, yelping laugh of something not quite human. 

A whistle, and then the lovely, androgynous face of a young man appears, stooping down in front of her, eyes the golden green of peridots staring into her face. “Come on, let’s get you out of here, poor girl.” 

“Who are you?” Molly gasps, even as the man pulls her up with surprising strength and ushers her quickly away. Behind them, ferocious sounds of battle carry on– ripping fabric, the patter of heavy feet, the scrape and clang of metal. “Why should I trust you? _What WAS that?!_ ”

“A friend. I was in the area, as it were,” The man smiles, and she’s quite certain that he could pass muster for Colgate commercials, and Molly finds herself breathing a bit easier. “I did call for back-up, once I figured out what was going on. And _that_ is a bad pick-up artist getting his just desserts, and we'll speak no more on him.”

He doesn’t say anything more, but before she can question anything further, they’re a good ten blocks away and he’s ushering her into a cab, pressing a handful of twenties into the driver’s hand. And then Molly is on her way, shaken, bruised but otherwise unhurt. She looks back through the rear windshield to see where her mysterious saviour might have gone, but the street is silent and deserted. She shivers all the way home, even after she’d burrowed under the covers in her bed, and wonders if she’ll ever feel warm and safe again.

Dawn breaks over the city and slowly it comes back to life, and on a street still gloomy, Molly’s green-eyed saviour surveys the pool of pitch-black viscera and matted fur with a grimace. “God, those things smell awful when they’re dead, don’t they? Like dung and burning hair.”

“Please don’t invoke Him lightly.” A tall, stalwart figure comes forth from beneath the scaffolding. Kafziel’s leather trench coat looks as though it’s been put through a wood-chipper, and there is a vicious-looking row of gashes– four in total, equidistant, on his left forearm. “The girl is home safe, I take it.”

“Of course.” Zhen smiles in his most winning way at the Watchman, who, true to form, is supremely and almost insultingly unaffected. “Thank you, by the way. For coming, that is. I didn’t know if anyone was going to, when I called.”

“Praying is not the same as hailing a cab,” Kafziel says reprovingly, then sighs. “This city is– special to me, I suppose. I will always defend it and its innocents. And they have no place here.” He glares at the befouled spot on the sidewalk where the Kishi finally fell, then shakes his head. “They are getting bolder. Greater in number. It is worrisome.”

“Yeah, a bit.” Zhen gives the rather grim-faced Kafziel a sideway glance. “I don’t suppose you approve of me much more than of– _that_.” He points at the bubbling miasma that is only now just beginning to settle and dry in the sunlight. His changeable green eyes meet the angel’s steadfast gray ones. “I suppose I can be naughty, sometimes. And self-indulgent. But a fondness for good chocolate and magic tricks isn’t on the same level as a propensity for biting someone’s face off. And what that thing was about to do was horrid on so many levels.”

“There are greater ills than your like, Trickster.” The angel intones, then gives Zhen a long, knowing look. “Moreover, I’ve met your lady. She treated me on another occasion, after an altercation with other creatures.”

Everything about Zhen lights up at the mention, however vague, of Raina. “She’s just _fantastic_ , isn’t she? I’m sure she took good care of you, whatever happened during that altercation. So smart, and competent, and wonderful, and beautiful. And I’m sure you’d rather I ask about the other creatures rather than wax poetic about my lady, of course, and I shall certainly do so momentarily. One must make allowances for a man in love.”

Much to Zhen’s surprise, the angel doesn’t seem affronted, and in fact, almost cracks a smile. Just the faintest quirk of lips, as though somewhere in his undoubtedly long and awe-inspiring existence, he’d seen enough to know something of love. “She did indeed take good care of me. And considering how many creatures there were…” He eyes the mess on the sidewalk, then gives Zhen a thoughtful look. “I don’t suppose you could do something to clean that up, before this area is crowded with the waking mortals.”

Zhen gives him a haughty look. “I am not a maidservant, and certainly don’t scrub up blood and guts and gore, especially not the cursed variety. The sunlight will take care of it, eventually, right?” Kafziel says nothing, simply keeps his gaze fixed upon Zhen’s, and the latter huffs, snaps his fingers. The area of sidewalk where the _Kishi_ had breathed its last is then cordoned off with yellow caution tape, flanked with orange construction cones, and the gooey, bloody mess changes form to appear as a mess of cracked pavement and even a manhole propped open. It is certainly not the prettiest illusion he has ever made, but…

“That will suffice.” Kafziel, with an angel’s typical arrogance, does not seem the sort to dole out lavish praise. Zhen nods, then gestures the badly-torn leather trench coat on his shoulders with something akin to recklessness. 

“Do you want me to fix that as well, Watchman?” He softens the sassy words with a smile. “Not the best look, I daresay.”

If angels rolled their eyes, this one’s look is almost that expression. He simply shrugs off the ruined coat, seemingly impervious to the chilly morning, and vanishes without another word with the suddenness of morning mist. Zhen chuckles, then shakes his head. “Well, thanks and have a nice morning, I guess!”

The wind picks up, a sudden gust that is vigorous but not overly cold, then dies as abruptly as it came. Zhen takes the acknowledgement– curt but not unkind– for what it is, and slowly makes his way back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Molly: Molly/Naru   
> Zhen: Zoisite  
> Kafziel: Kunzite  
> Raina: Ami


	28. Beg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follows the last chapter. Prompter, Cluckster, Prompt: M/K, Beg. Names are, of course, at the end notes.

Kafziel isn’t quite so lucky this time when he returns to the hospital.

The _Kishi_ had, of course, put up a good fight. But it was relatively young for its kind, and alone, and though its brutal fangs could maim with deadly force and a bite with ten times the power of a steel bear trap, a sword tipped in heavenly flame can quite effectively keep it at bay, at least far enough away that its jaws can’t grip upon far more than the material of his outer coat. And, weakened with hunger and thwarted from its would-be meal, it certainly wasn’t a match for his stamina. The coat was wrecked, of course. And the creature had landed one solid blow on Kafziel’s arm with its sharp claws, right before he’d hewn its paw from its body. He’d dispatched the creature fairly quickly after that, and had left with a fair certainty that by the time the Trickster’s illusions would fade away into oblivion, the remnants of that demon’s corporeal form would have long since evaporated in the sunlight. 

He does not count on running into Desirée almost right as he walks in, though. 

She looks as lovely as she had in life, golden-haired and fine-featured and white-clad, smiling up at him in warm welcome, but almost immediately her eyes fall upon the row of bloody marks raking down his arm, and her smile vanishes. “You’re hurt. Something attacked you.” Her fingers are ice-cold and would have brought the stroke of eternal rest to any mortal life she touched, but they are gentle and shaky against his skin, like the glide of melting ice. Her lips quiver and her eyes almost seem to fill with tears. “Something did this to you– to _you_. How could they?”

“Oh, they can, quite well,” Kafziel attempts a casual tone, but gentles it when her lips tremble. “I’m quite unharmed, little one. It is just a scratch. Certainly nothing more than a nuisance. Mortal children get worse, scraping their knees and elbows on the playground.”

The stare she aims at him says quite plainly that she doesn’t believe him for an instant. “Who– or _what_ – did this?”

He doesn’t lie, and it would be cruel to prevaricate in the face of her worry. “A demon. It was about to attack a young girl when I came upon it.” He doesn’t tell her the horrific details– of blood-tinged breath and deadly jaws– but instead, makes the attempt to comfort her. “There are creatures who are damned, who are created by unholy acts, or seek to harm and destroy the pure and innocent. If I do come across one in the midst of its destructive frenzy, I have no choice but to stop it in the name of all that is good and holy.”

“And do these creatures appear frequently?” Desirée, perhaps realizing that she could never hurt him, leads him to a deserted corner by one of the nurses’ stations and locates a roll of gauze. She makes quick work of ripping off what’s left of his sleeve, then dips the gauze in plain water. It’s more symbolic than anything– the wound is, indeed, no more than a scratch. And had it been more serious, something more than just water and gauze would have been necessary to treat it. But the proximity, or perhaps simply the act of doing _something_ – even as simple as tying on gauze, seems to calm her, and he takes her hands when she finishes. 

“They appear every now and then. Different breeds, different reasons.” Her hands are so small and cold in his, but he sees why the mortals find comfort in this simplest of gestures. “This one was simply hungry. Sometimes the older and more cunning of its kind will seduce a woman and get a child on her before eating her, and teaching its child to crave the taste of flesh, and that is how they breed.” She tilts her head up, as though about to beg, and he presses a kiss to the top of her golden head. “Worry not. It’s gone, now, before it could do any harm last night.”

“I suppose I should be grateful that you were there to save her,” Desirée’s voice is muffled slightly against his shoulder, “But how can I be?”

The guilt hits him then, harder than a dozen demon-strikes all at once, and it chills him to the center of his very being. He’d never, ever reconciled to himself the ill-fated, short span of her mortal life, and now his eyes meet hers, gray and bleak as the midwinter sky. “I know I couldn’t save you. You were doomed by the time I learned of your existence, and for that— for that, my love, I will never forgive myself.”

This anguish does not become him, he knows, and she is but one of countless who’d been doomed to live a life too dark for such a bright and loving spirit. But before he can wonder, again, why that had been her fate, her cold fingers reach up and touch the planes of his face, jerking him back to the present. She’s looking up at him, a wistful smile across her delicate lips, and she shakes her head. 

“That is not what I was referring to, you know.” Desirée leans up, and in a gesture somehow warmer and sweeter than a kiss, presses her cheek to his, golden hair tumbling down over the ruins of his shirt to brush, cool and silky, against his arm. “I can’t be glad of anything that hurts you or puts you in harm’s way. Though I know you do what you must.” 

He pulls her close, and perhaps both of them take comfort in the proximity, after all, because something of her shaking subsides, and something of his anger. “He’s in Hell, you know. Drowning in filth and blood. Harangued by arrows tipped with fire. The Furies flay his flesh with their wild-dog teeth and bat-like wings. And it brings me no satisfaction that he has met his just desserts.”

“That is because hate and vengeance are not your domain.” Her whisper is soft and muffled against his shoulder. “I don’t think about him, not any more. I know that I am not alone, or unloved. What does he matter, really? You, on the other hand…” She finally pulls back, with a shuddering breath that chills the air and flutters like cold wind through her hair. “I know it’s not my place to do so, and undoubtedly I have no right. But I must beg of you to be careful, if you come across another one of those creatures again.”

“I will.” He brushes back her hair and takes her hands in his. Her cold fingers portend death, and his are hard with the might and power of the righteous at his command, but they’re both so careful when they link hands. “No evil creature will not destroy another innocent life, if I can help it.”

“Oh, Kafziel,” On her lips, his name is a whispered sigh. Desirée looks up at him with her blue, blue eyes, and smiles without a hint of recrimination. “No evil creature ever destroyed me, either. And here, with you, none ever shall.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kafziel: Kunzite  
> Desirée: Minako


	29. By The Neck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight warnings for mentions of drug use/gang activity, threats of violence. As usual, the names of the canon characters are on the bottom notes (though really, if you've followed the story this far, pretty sure you have these down by now XD).

At this hour of night, this section of Central Park is all but deserted, which serves the purposes of the two young men meeting there just fine. The older of the two unties the red bandanna around his head and stuffs it into a pocket before stepping out into the light– the colour is too eye-catching, even at this hour of night, and likely to draw the attention of passersby or the odd passing cop. The star-shaped tattoo on his wrist is a little less noticeable. 

He doesn’t give the other boy much of a greeting beyond a fairly elaborate handshake-fist-bump combination, during which money changes hands, but sits down at the base of the a statue– fairly new, some dude in a cape holding a sword atop a horse, lights up a cigarette as he counts the wadded-up cash. “That’s a little bit more than what I asked, Trey. Wanna tell me what’s up?”

Trey is perhaps all of fifteen, gangly but baby-faced, shuffling his feet in his battered red high-tops. “Well, I got together some extra. You know. Isn’t that good, Switch?”

The evasiveness of Trey’s body language and his non-answer to Switch’s question makes the older boy lean forward, all but trapping him against the statue’s concrete base. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to get up to some shit, now. I don’t think that’d be a smart idea.”

“I just– I got a new caseworker. She actually cares. I’ve been going to school and I think I might be able to graduate. She’s even helping me get a part-time job.” Trey’s still too young to know not to babble out sensitive information when he’s nervous, and so he rambles, shrinking away from Switch’s thunderous expression. “I won’t snitch or nothing, I promise. She doesn’t know anything about any of that, and I’m not gonna tell her. I just think I should get out of this so that it won’t fuck up my chances.”

“And you think it’s that easy, huh?” 

The _snick_ of a knife being drawn is all but silent, and yet to Trey, in this still and deadly-silent park, it’s loud as a gunshot, almost as loud as the pulse pounding in his throat. Switch– short for Switchblade, his weapon of choice, so easily hidden, and yet, flicked open close enough to his face to nick the tip of his nose, so lethal, all the same. “We took care of you when your trickin’ mama couldn’t. And now you think an extra hundred dollars gets you a free pass? An out?” Switch’s face is close enough to Trey’s that flecks of saliva impact against Trey’s cheek with his words, but the boy is too terrified to be grossed out. “You seen what happens to snitches. I guess you about to see what happens to rats going green, too.”

Trey is too scared to do more than yelp and squeeze his eyes shut, but the slash of the knife never comes. He hears a rumble, feels the earth shake in its very foundations at his feet. _Maybe this is what an earthquake feels like, or the Apocalypse_. Suddenly he doesn’t feel the pressure of a body up in his face any more, and hears Switch screaming.

He opens his eyes, and sees his former fellow gang member airborne, hoisted up by the scruff of his neck like a kitten, arms and legs dangling helplessly. The man holding him immobile is tall and muscular, looking like something out of King Arthur or maybe the Vikings, and has the tip of a wicked-looking sword that makes Switch’s knife look like a toothpick in comparison held to Switch’s throat. Trey has no idea where his mysterious saviour had come from; certainly, he’d not heard anyone or anything approaching just a moment ago. The man turns his face towards Trey, eyes dark and flashing.

“Run, you dithering knave! What are you waiting for?”

Trey jerks into action and jumps to his feet, dashing for the nearest exit. He almost crashes into a woman walking into the park, but manages to avoid her at the last second with a hasty “’Scuse me, ma’am!”. Maybe his new caseworker would help him evade Switch and any of the others who would likely now try to beat his ass. _Angela_. He’d never met anyone like her before, capable of giving him reason to hope for the better. 

“You’re excused.” Linden knows terror when she sees it, and it’s all but radiating off the boy in waves. It doesn’t take much to ascertain, based on his speed and direction, that he must have come from _that_ particular section of the park, and she quickens her footsteps. She’s not quite prepared, however, to see her noble, impetuous, good-hearted idiot of a knight holding a flailing young man aloft twenty feet in the air. 

“Drop him. Hard enough to immobilize him. Not hard enough to kill him.” 

Nathalán follows her directive, but at that distance, Switch is still immediately rendered unconscious by the drop. Linden kicks away the knife that falls from his hand hard enough that it splashes into the pond, then bends over him, critically. 

“He’ll live. Probably a bit of a concussion and definitely will be favouring his left leg, but he may make it another year. Unless his lifestyle gets the best of him.” She is no fool, and certainly the tattoos and colours are a dead giveaway of his affiliation and probable livelihood. “I suppose he was shaking down the other one who ran out like the hounds of hell were pursuing him?”

“The other one was trying to bow out. Abjure the group which he’d been part of. They’ve been gathering more often, of late, in the park late at night. Selling their bags of powder or pastiles.”

“Kid’s trying to jump out of a street gang,” Linden shakes her splendid, curly head. “He’s lucky to have escaped with his life.”

“Will they seek retribution, then?” Nathalán asks in his blunt, direct way. “He is but a child. Foolish, undoubtedly, but not worthy of the ills they would visit upon him.”

“He shouldn’t have gotten tangled up with the street life,” Linden murmurs. “But I suppose I can’t fault you for having sympathy for foolhardy lads with more bravado than sense.” Nimbly, she clambers up onto the statuary’s base, so that she can look him in the eye. “I daresay you saved his life just now.”

His hand, so rough and inexorable around Switch’s neck, is gentle as it traces her back, pausing over her shoulder-blades where her wings would be when she’s in her most primordial and deadly of forms. “Maybe I see something of myself in him– a yearning to regain honour that’s been lost. A desire to be worthy, someday, of love and forgiveness.” He dips his head, and the lips that touch her temple are soft and not at all cold, for the moment. “I just thought– he should get that chance. As I did.”

“You are shameless and incorrigible,” Linden tells him, unable to stop a wry laugh from bubbling up. “I’ll see what I can do, I suppose.”

“I shall keep watch from here, as usual. And let you know if there is news.”

**

Though he was certainly not opposed to being inundated by some very nice drugs, courtesy of the emergency room staff at the hospital, Switch didn’t enjoy being laid up, not one bit. No one believed him, of course, and part of him was afraid that maybe he really was losing it. Certainly there was no freaking way that he’d been plucked off the ground by some statue come to life like something out of a Harry Potter movie, then unceremoniously dropped like a used Kleenex. He’d been found the next morning by park maintenance and by all accounts was lucky to be alive– between the concussion and the broken leg and the freezing temperatures. Of course the po-po’s had not bought the story of why he’d been there so late, and they’d busted him cold with Oxy’s and two dime-bags of blow. One of the narcos actually had the nerve to laugh at him. “Well, Switch, maybe you wouldn’t be imagining such things if you weren’t high all the time. Funny how these things happen only to people like you.”

He hated the fucking cops.

Of course, there’d be the whole parade of possession charges and court and probie. And then he’d get down to business. Trey, specifically, was at fault for the predicament that he’d found himself in at present, and therefore needed to face the consequences of his actions. He still had homeboys on the street who could take care of a miserable little prick as easy as one-two-three. Just as soon as he managed to get out of this godforsaken hospital, of course. When he was somewhere not handcuffed to a bed.

The TV is set to one of the cooking shows, probably the food network or something, and the hostess is a super hot lady with curly reddish-brown hair and fantastic boobs behind her cute little apron get-up, showing the audience how to make some type of fancy holiday roast thing. 

“The most important part of this is letting it rest. You don’t want to carve it right away, not while it’s still tense from the heat and stress of the cooking process.” The perky hostess explains as she pulls the steaming roast out of the oven with bright-green mitts. Switch barely pays attention to her long-winded explanation, but out of nowhere, the TV starts to flicker, then go to static. Yet, eerily, though the entire pretty suburban-kitchen background of the cooking show disappears into that black-and-white-snowfall-effect, the cooking lady remains, facing him head-on, brandishing a carving knife with casual, deadly expertise in one hand and a knife-honer in the other. She’s got great boobs and is all smiles, but Switch knows, just from the way she’s holding it, that she’s as deadly with a bladed weapon as he is. 

“Rest, now.” The lady’s voice is still sweet, terrifyingly so. “I’ll carve it when it’s ready. There will be enough for everyone, even those who want seconds.” Switch clutches at the sheets and attempts to scoot back, but his bum leg keeps him immobile, as do the handcuffs. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do now. You wouldn’t want to ruin things, would you?” For one electrifying, nightmarish moment, he could swear that the cooking lady’s eyes go red as blood on that television screen even as the ring of carbon steel echoes eerily in the room. Switch feels cold sweat beading on the back of his neck, and on his upper lip, goose-flesh breaking out over his arms. 

“Fuck all this.” Shakily, he hits the button to summon a nurse. “Get that asshole pig in here. I need to talk to him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angela: Usagi  
> Linden: Makoto  
> Nathalán: Nephrite


	30. Midnight Swim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Sorry about the slight hiatus-- went ahead and wrote another fic for this year's senshi/shitennou minibang. But as that is done, now back to the regularly scheduled programming which means another chapter of this thing. Dedicated to Ellorgast, as usual. Also as usual, names of the characters in the bottom notes.

It’s a ritual of a sort now, almost a weekly thing. It is never at a set time, or a set day, because every day brings with it new life and death in this world that they inhabit. But roughly once a week, they escape the sterile, familiar grounds of the hospital, with its everlasting cycle of life battling death, and explore the city. Last week had the two of them standing atop the glowing torch of the Lady Liberty statue, Kafziel’s powerful wings shielding her from the wind. It was an area not open to tourists and the general public, but as Kafziel explained it, the statue itself was one of the most famous attractions to the city, with a history spanning back centuries.

It seems to be a theme on their outings, when he gives her a taste of the human life, but also lets the experience go above and beyond what the mortals would have been able to access on their own. If it had been a courtship between a man and a woman, it would have been beyond romantic. As it stands, Desirée looks forward to every single one of these stolen moments, the way a young human girl might anticipate the arrival of a love letter. 

It’s a random Monday night and the weather outside is dismal– iron-gray skies and pouring rain, people swearing and ducking under awnings as they ran from one place to another. There are occasional growls of thunder in the far distance, but Desirée pays it very little mind. The hospital has been quiet thus far, and perhaps it will be an uneventful evening after all.

Kafziel always walks silently, but she never fails to feel his presence even before she can see him. There’s a charge to the air, like the brush of static electricity against one’s skin, and she lifts her head even before the weight of his hand lands on her shoulder. She leans back, just a little, and wonders if he cares that she steals that moment to let his strength bulwark her. He’s so strong, so eternally indestructible that surely, it means nothing for her to borrow a bit of that strength, if even for a little while. 

His hands curve around both shoulders, and his voice sounds, soft and soothing, somewhere by the hair at her temple. “Tired, little one?”

“No, but perhaps a bit blue. It’s not very nice outside, and everyone has been glum.” 

“I don’t know why everyone gets worked up over a spot of rain. Certainly, it can be a great deal worse.” Kafziel’s been around for the plagues and the ancient floods and famines, and there’s something akin to amusement in his eyes as he stares out at the dark sky. It’s nightfall now, and there are no visible stars or moon. “Water, fire, air, earth. The world at its most basic, and the mortals need all four to live. Come.”

“Where are we— ooohh!” Her question ends on a squeal, because a moment later, they’ve exited– through a window that Desirée knows is kept locked. Kafziel’s wings unfurl and then they’re airborne and traveling through cold rain and a brisk wind, and certainly she’d be cold if she were human, still. Desirée can’t feel the fluctuations in temperature, but she can feel the rain, the way a glass windowpane must, as thousands of little imprints of pressure, gentle and fleeting as a kiss on her skin. The wind blows through her hair, and the rain soaks through the white of her dress, sluicing against her skin and plastering the fabric against her body in a way that would make her blush, were she still capable of it. And Kafziel, of course, decently and chastely keeps his eyes fixed upon her face.

They reach the New York Bay, where the river flows into the ocean, and the waters are choppy. But Kafziel doesn’t hesitate to fly downward, and any protests that Desirée may have are lost in a whoosh of wind and a shrieking laugh before they break through the icy, churning surface of the waves. She doesn’t choke, or sputter, and neither of them make a splash, but she can feel the movement around her limbs, the buoyancy of the saltwater lifting her up slightly, and even feel a bit of the resistance as she moves her arms and legs.

Kafziel’s head appears back up over the surface, his hair sleek as silver, and his wings have vanished. He cuts through the water with even strokes, the tempest on the ocean’s surface no match for his powerful arms. “You try it,” he tells her, almost laughingly, like a boy up to some mischief. “Swim. Just move through the water with your limbs.”

She does, and it’s different from moving through air, even with her tempered senses. Slowly, almost silently, the rain comes to a stop, though the ocean around them flows, strong and steady and yet not quite comforting. She’s certain that though the mortals are fond enough of swimming, they don’t do so in the rough, cold Atlantic in early spring. But she finally makes it over to where he is, and lets her hands rest, quite naturally, on his forearms. His shirt, much like her dress, is soaked through, and his chest is as solid as a stone wall. 

“This area is rife with shipping and transport interests at other hours. It’s one reason this city was so successful in the past. Trade fosters prosperity and communication, the growth of a population, the introduction of new ideas and inventions.” 

“Is that why I ended up here?” Desirée asks him. In her ill-fated mortal life, she’d lived in France. She has no true memory of how she’d ended up here, though she would have thought that she’d recall crossing the ocean. “Because there are a lot of people?” It’s a depressing thought– that she’d be the one to usher thousands of people to their final rest. 

“No. France underwent some turmoil not long after your time there.” Indeed, though he would never have said so aloud, her own husband had met what Kafziel considered a just fate perhaps a decade after Desirée’s own passing, at the merciless blade of Madame La Guillotine. 

“I see.” The waves are rougher now, even though the rain had stopped, and she moves a little bit closer to Kafziel. “And what made you bring me here, specifically?”

“Because this isn’t perhaps the prettiest, or the most romantic of places, but the pulse of life is strong underneath the rough. I wanted you to feel alive. And nothing reminds us more of that, perhaps, than the trivial inconveniences of mortality.” 

Desirée doesn’t know if Kafziel is referring to the city itself, or swimming at midnight in a rainy ocean, but she finds herself fighting tears– happy ones– for the first time in her memory, even as she skates her fingers up the planes of his chest to his familiar, beloved face, pulls it close enough that she can press her own against it. It’s in all the little, trivial things, as he has said. Wilting flowers in hospital rooms, and old photographs, and strangers on the subway, and the pitter-patter of rain on her skin. It does not signify that all of these things aren’t necessarily pretty or pleasant. 

It signifies that it’s all a labour of eternal, silent love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kafziel: Kunzite  
> Desiree: Minako


	31. Moonlit Sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello! Was out of the country for a while, just came back! Here's chapter the next, dedicated to Ellorgast. As always the names are at the end of the chapter.

Adam King does not often take the time to walk the scenic route through Central Park on his way to or from work. The long hours at Bellevue have him mostly seeking the quickest and easiest way home afterwards, to a warm bed next to his beloved wife.

But perhaps it’s her influence in a way– Angela always takes the time to enjoy the littlest things, and never to take even a second for granted. In any case, as the weather begins to warm, Adam finds himself taking the time to walk through the park on sunny afternoons, admiring the blue skies and greening trees.

It’s on one such visit that he notices the latest in the park’s collection of statuary. The plaque is bronze, engraved in fancy Gothic lettering, and proclaims the figure– a stalwart knight on a galloping horse with a pair of whimsical batlike wings half-unfurled on his broad shoulders– to be “Sir Nathalán, circa 1020-1050″, donated to the Central Park collection by a Marcus Huntington Group. It is the oddest thing, really… Adam is not the type to pay particular mind to inanimate objects, but there is something strangely lifelike about the piece– its hyper-realistic pose, perhaps, or the expression on its face, showing what looks like self-deprecating humour in its smile. 

It is perhaps a week after Adam first noticed the statue of Sir Nathalán that he finds himself crossing the park late at night after pulling a double. He’s exhausted, and certainly it’s a long walk, but perhaps it would do him good to stay awake this way rather than doze off on the subway and go well past his stop. Carrying a to-go cup of cheap cafeteria coffee, he crosses the area where that statue stands, and almost crashes into a raven-haired woman with a blood-red mouth.

The woman smiles at Adam in a way undoubtedly meant to be seductive, but is discomfitting instead. “Well met, weary traveler. And what brings you here at this hour?” Certainly it’s a trick of the light, under the pale, ghostly gleam of a full moon that is veiled by a thin layer of cloud cover like an uncanny shroud of light in an otherwise ink-black sky, but her eyes gleam amber in some lights, red in others.

“Home to my wife, ma’am. If you’ll excuse me.” Adam tries to side-step her, but with an almost-animalistic grace, she steps into his path again.

“Oh, but tarry a little. It is a beautiful night.” Her smile widens to reveal very white teeth. “Let’s watch the moonrise together.”

“I don’t think…” Before Adam can finish his sentence, he’s flung down face-first, sprawling, and lands hard on the grass with the wind knocked out of him. There’s a blood-curdling howl, like that of a wolf, followed by the clang of something metallic, like a blade hitting a hard surface.

“Your steel and stone have no effect on me.” The words are spoken in an unearthly, eerie cackle. “Let me have my quarry, _Stone-Hewn_ , for I came by it fairly.”

“I was never a good son and master, but such as it is, I still hold the symbols and emblems of my rank.” Out of the corner of his eye, Adam sees a tall, wild-haired man lift what looks to be a shaggy black wolf aloft by the throat, a heavy ring gleaming silver in the moonlight. “You shall not harm him. He is under my protection tonight.”

“And what of tomorrow night?” The voice is strained, wheezing for air. “Or several moons from now?” Whatever taunt might have been placed in response to the man’s declaration cuts off with a pained howling scream as the ring-bearing hand squeezes down, shakes for good measure. The wild-haired man holds the beast aloft, eye to eye, and scowls in such a typical show of male bravado that it’s almost incongruous to the surrealistic scene playing out.

“I can hold you fast until the sunrise, wolf-daemon. Unlike you, I have nothing but time.” A smile, all white teeth on his sun-browned face, crosses his lips. “Begone, then.” With a wide, powerful throw, the wolf is flung, like a football, halfway across the park. It has time to let out one dismayed yelp before it disappears somewhere out of Adam’s line of sight. He stumbles to his feet, somewhat disoriented and more than a little shocked and disbelieving, and looks about him.

It’s the weirdest thing, but nothing looks really out of the ordinary. There’s the statue of the knight, perched on his horse as usual. Approaching the area from a different direction is a woman with a mane of curly chestnut hair, but she doesn’t set off any alarm bells in Adam’s head. She looks at him, in fact, and raises both eyebrows with a mien of concern.

“You okay there, buddy? Looks like you tripped and fell. Your hands are scraped all to hell.”

“I’m okay, I think. Did you see what just…?”

“I didn’t see anything, but you sure you’re okay. I’m not an EMT or anything but you look like you’d fallen pretty hard.” The woman pulls out a cell phone. “Want me to call someone?”

“I’m not hurt. Just… I think I just possibly imagined a whole bizarre episode.” Adam rubs a hand over his eyes, then gives the woman a weary smile. “Must be the tiredness setting in. I just got off a double at the job. I’m Adam, by the way. Adam King.”

“No worries. I totally get it. Linden Thorne. I keep chef hours. Pretty sure I can’t remember the last time I got the full eight hours of sleep in a single night. Well, Doc, if you’re sure you don’t need anything, go on home and take care.”

“You, too.”

They part ways and head off in different directions, and Adam loses sight of her after he turns a corner.

It doesn’t occur to him until he’s digging out his keys to unlock the door of his own home that he had not said anything to Linden Thorne about where he worked, nor worn scrubs, nor a name tag.

She had no reason to know that he was a doctor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adam: Mamoru  
> Angela: Usagi  
> Nathalán: Nephrite  
> Linden: Makoto


End file.
